Saving the "germaniums"

[electra225]

I have been nursing four pots of geramiums for three years. We bought these as annuals from Home Depot. They are just the typical Bonny plants HD sells, nothing really special about them except the wife thinks they are unusually pretty when they bloom. In the midwest, you would bring them in and store them in the garage until spring. Out here, they go dormant. They look like they are dead. All brown except for some TINY green shoots right at dirt level. The stems on the leaves are still green, but the leaves are dead. In September, when the daily temps are below 90 degrees, new shoots will start under the old leaves, displace them, and the plants will "look" alive again. These set outside in the shade of the shop. I water them every day. The secret is to keep the soil moist. They look awful. Geraniums like warm weather and sunshine, but they go dormant when it gets above 100 degrees for days on end.

[TC Chris]

I'm on the opposite schedule, kinda like how you don't drive the old car in the summer. I have a geranium that I bought in 1994 after I moved. By now, cuttings from it have filled 3 other pots. I bring them in for the winter and put them in my unheated back room (always above freezing). They don't get enough light from the windows and get leggy by spring, but then I cut them back some and put them out for the summer.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

When we went back and forth between here and Missouri, the geraniums would bloom almost year around. They would have a period of about a month on each end where they would just "stand there" and not do much until they figured out what kind of weather they were having. We put them in egg boxes and loaded them into the trailer for the trip each way. They didn't seem to mind that. They were green year around. Now they are really sad looking in the summer.

[TC Chris]

The other problem in MI is deer. There is a vast overpopulation of them and they gobble everything. They have suppressed native plants but they also LOVE foraging in gardens. Even things they don't like, such as Iris. They munch on 'em, yanking out the tubers, and then drop them to die. But they love geraniums. Nasty animals....

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

Deer make some good eating, particularly if they have been fed corn. Get a "shoot gun" and a freezer, then get even. Iris are a nuisance. I would have let the deer eat ours. They spread like weeds. Like you said, all the deer do with iris is pull the bulbs up and make a mess.

[electra225]

Hybernating geraniums.....

[19&41]

They look like I feel in this weather.

[electra225]

I have one trying to bloom in this heat. I had to cut the buds off, which made me sad, but they can't bloom as warm as it is. They look really sad, all dried up and brown. They will come out in about six weeks or so.

[hermitcrab]

I guess I need to read more carefully... my response was convert to silicon ...