Friday 25 March 2011

The Geraniums are recovering

Towards the end of January I took some cuttings from one of my Geranium plants. At that time (20th Jan) it was not looking very healthy, and a lot of the leaves were pale and/or blotchy. The cuttings were a bit of an insurance policy  - in case the parent succumbed.

20th Jan

I had a close look at the parent plant again today. It has been kept in my garage, which is quite cold, but certainly frost-free. The plant looks much healthier now, and the leaves are much greener. This is probably due to the increasing day-length and ambient light levels.


There are lots of pale greeny-yellow leaves forming at the ends of the stems where I took the cuttings.


I think these little leaves are only pale because they are young. They look healthy enough to me.


This next photo shows off the little tiny silvery hairs on the Geranium stems.


I think this plant is going to be fine. I hope it will go on to do as well as it did last year. At one point it had 20 massive big pink flowers on it.

Today I potted up the cuttings I took, back in January. They had been sitting in a jam-jar of water on the kitchen windowsill, but they had only produced a very small number of tiny roots, so I decided it would be better to put them in some compost.

The cuttings from last Autumn, over-wintered in the garage, have not grown much (which is not surprising), but they have regained their green colour - having been turned bronze by the cold.

This was last September:



This is today: (The one in the picture above is on the left in the picture below)

 

6 comments:

  1. When would you put the geraniums outside? our 'Lara' plant is looking like it is longing for fresh air but I'm a bit scared to put it out yet.

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  2. Geraniums are frost-tender, so I wouldn't put them outside permanently just yet. I'd put them outside in the daytime and bring them inside at night. Perhaps best to prune them quite hard too, to make them a bit a bit more compact. (If yours are like mine, they will have gone fairly leggy during the Winter.)

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  3. I love geraniums Mark, such beautiful flowers, and so good to grow in the heat and dry we have here. Yours looks lovely and healthy too, and the cuttings look great.

    You have inspired me to go forth and find some more today Mark. Can't wait to see your flowers.

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  4. We've always treated Geraniums as annuals here. May have to see about wintering some over this fall. Good post!

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  5. that's good news Mark. Mine didn't survive the winter in the yard. I shall get another one this year though as it provided such lovely colour throughout the whole summer and up until about October.

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  6. Thank you for reminding me that I need to propagate some cuttings of my geranium Mark. I run out of pots and recycle containers that I keep on forgetting the geranium. Yours look very healthy as the weather gets warmer over your region.

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