When should I plant out my geranium (pelargonium) cuttings?

Back last August, I took lots of geranium cuttings.  So what has happened to them since, you may be wondering. Well they are doing just fine thank you. The smallest ones have been on my window sill all winter and now they are bursting to go outside. Since we could still have frosts at night, I am waiting till April to plant them out and meantime I am enjoying the daffodils in the border first. You can see how big the cuttings are in the first picture above.

The rest of the plants, which I had in the back garden last summer, were brought in in October before the first frosts arrived. They have been sunning themselves in the ‘den’ at the back of the cottage all winter. Now they are getting a bit leggy and want to go outside, but first they must be hardened off. I shall be doing that soon.

Geraniums, or to give them their proper name, pelargoniums, are easy to grow and quick to propagate so they are ideal for beginners to gardening and for me because there is such a high success rate. I like to make sure that I get a continuity of colour each year so I take care, when propagating, to get an equal number of red, white, pink and peach plants. Each year it seems that one or other does better than the rest and, of course, I am always on the look out for new colours. I would love to have a blue one, but blue is not the most prolific colour in the plant world.

Like the primrose, the geranium is not particularly attractive to bees for pollinating. The primrose (which I wrote about yesterday) relies on small insects to spread its seeds and the geraniums need a bit of help from me!

This is one of the pink ones, which is longing to get outside. It’s such a delicate colour, isn’t it.

Millie thinks I’m mad, messing about with plants all the time; you can tell from her expression while she is watching me:

So today it is fine and sunny outside and so I may go out and poggle about with the fork! First I have to think about something for dinner?

What are you having for dinner today?

Oma

Propagating geraniums – how to take geranium cuttings.

 Picture of man in shed from the internet.

The geraniums in the tub below are beginning to look a bit tired.  Time to take cuttings.

I decided to start with the red one in the pot. Look at the next picture.  Can you see the larger stalk on the right of the red geranium?

That’s the one I’m starting with. Cut it off with your secateurs, just below a growing tip. See next picture to make sure you know what I mean by a growing tip.

Now remove and discard all the lower leaves and any flower stalks that are still apparent.  If you do this then the growth will go into the making of new roots and not into the production of more flowers. The larger leaves would die anyway so they need to come off. Now you are left with a perfect cutting. This will become a new plant, which you can put in your border next year, but you have to keep it indoors all through the winter.

Find your compost.  I put mine in a large blue tub, which doubles up as a play piece for my grandson when he comes round.  He loves to dig in here and it is relatively free from germs.

Put some of the compost in a small flower pot.  This one is a four inch pot. Incidentally this is not very good compost. I bought it in the Supermarket and it was cheap, but it is quite woody and not ideal for this job. The best compost is John Innes no. 2 which is a much finer compost. However I’ve put it in here so you can see the difference.  This would not be suitable for sewing seeds into. For that job you would need a much finer compost.

Poke the cutting into the compost in the pot until the growing tip is covered.  I’ve left this one a bit proud so you can see what I mean. You will need to poke it in further than this one.

Notice that a caterpillar has had a chew at this leaf.  Make sure he’s still not on the leaf when you plant the cutting (for obvious reasons).

This morning I did several.  I planted them together in a tub in the garden. They should be fine in there for another month and will benefit from the sun and the rain.  It will also make them hardy.  When I come back from America in mid October, I will take some more pictures of these cuttings so you can see how they’re doing. By then they will need to be put in pots and brought indoors before the first frosts arrive.

In the tub I have a selection of white, red, pink and peach cuttings.  It will be interesting to see which ones do the best.

These are cuttings of lychnis and Sweet Williams.  I’ll talk more about them another time.

After all that work, I reckon I deserved a nice lunch so I went into Oma’s kitchen and made myself a fry-up. Yummy!

What are you doing today?

In the pink with my Grandson Dylan.

Before I start this post, I just want to say thank you to all the people who are following my Blog.  I hope you are enjoying it and will continue to visit me in the future.

After our long awaited week of sunshine, flowers started appearing all over the garden. The roses seemed to like the sun and turned their faces to their almost forgotten friend.

This rose, Apricot Abundance, has at last come into its own, although on the second flush it’s more pink than apricot.

Dylan took his turn at watering the flowers and was most enthusiastic about it.  Notice in the background that the geraniums are flowering at last!

Dylan was most particular about filling the jug to the top to water the borders.  It must have been quite heavy for him.

The next picture shows Dylan standing next to his very own runner bean plant (in the tub). He planted the seeds himself and is watering them regularly. With the arrival of the sunshine, he now has lots of flowers, which will make lots of beans.  We await the first bean with anticipation.

I haven’t been so lucky with my Sweet Peas, which are in the smaller tub. They have been a disaster so far. I’ve had one measly flower and nothing since. Oh dear.

and to finish, here is a short video of Dylan with his jug. Hope you enjoy. I can’t help chuckling when I watch it because towards the end he takes the very big green watering can, empty otherwise he wouldn’t be able to lift it and takes both it and the jug to the borders. It’s so funny. See what you think.

Happy Gardening People.

Oma

Sunday is Gardening Day – July 15th 2012

During last week we have had far too much rain in the cottage garden. The climbing roses have been doing their best to hang on, but today I cut them back. With luck and if the weather is kind, we may see another flush in August.

The geraniums (pelargoniums) have also taken a battering but now, at last, I see some flowers.

The vegetables have suffered even more. The next picture shows the runner beans this time last year. Notice there are lots of flowers!

Now compare this year’s photograph… too much rain, not enough flying insects to pollinate the flowers.  Flowers? What flowers. We are still waiting.

Geraniums

Ivy on the balcony.

Feverfew is abundant just now.  It has a lovely, musty smell.

The daisies are hardy and seem to take whatever comes.  This year because of the wet conditions, they have grown very leggy.

Have a great week fellow bloggers.