I have a couple of geranium plants that I want to grow next year. One was a 2 year old plant that was stuck in a back row last year and didn't have much chance to shine, but did survive. The other was a ten year old, variegated leaf variety that I dug up and left bare root.
Here's the first. I left it bare root on top of the dahlia tubers in peat moss. I planted it in a flower pot, in some potting soil.
Then I trimmed off everything that looked obviously dead. Here's what remains.
That's all it needs or can handle for now. I watered and placed it out of too-bright sunshine. We'll see if it recovers. It's sad looking, might or might not recover.
Here are cuttings I took from the dried out variegated geranium plant.
I cut off everything that looked dead. The cuttings are in water. We'll see how they do. This is a heirloom variety, "Mrs. Pollock", grown in the 1850s. Not a typo - before the civil war. The leaves are pale green because it was in the dark, in the garage, dried out.
I think they'll probably grow. Earlier this year I stuck prunings into the ground and did nothing, and they grew. I might clean up some more and grow a row of them next year. Geraniums are highly heat and dry tolerant, and deer don't touch them. Neither do rabbits.
To think about cost savings, if each grows to a $3 size, and we start ten from cuttings (free), then that's $30 saved. I wouldn't spend that much on geraniums in the first place, so it's really having an opportunity to have a row of nice plants and create them myself.
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