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A garden full of geraniums can be a delightful sight indeed. These plant beds can be grown easily and are low maintenance too. Gardeners and cultivators are quite skilled at growing colourful geraniums. These colourful flowers originated in South Africa.
The plant perennials can grow in places where the winters are milder. These flowers also have sweet-smelling foliage attributed to the same. The blossoms of these flowers take a variety of shades. The flowers bloom in colourful hues like white, rose, lavender, red, pink, salmon, orange, or even violet. Therefore, these flowers can provide a vibrant look to your garden spaces.
You can plant geraniums as bedding in outdoor areas. However, as their roots are close-bound and tightly packed, people prefer planting these flower beds via containers or pots. These plants can grow more beautifully indoors as against outdoor spots. Therefore, you can beautify your living areas, verandahs, and balconies that are available at your homes.
Let us discover ways and means how to grow geraniums in pots or containers.
How to Grow Geraniums in Containers?
You can grow geraniums in pots or containers using a number of attractive ways. Here are the steps listed on how you can grow these lovely flowering plants.
1. Varieties of Geranium Seeds for Garden Centers
Before you decide to have the seeds procured from garden centres or nurseries, you must discover the different varieties of geranium seeds that people generally grow indoors. Two of the geranium seeds are the more popular ones. The most popular one is the Apple Rosebuds. These plant perennials are scientifically known as the Pelargonium X Hortorum. The plant beds have green leaves that feel soft and velvety. The succulent stems become woody once they grow older. These plant perennials then turn into picturesque shrubs that grow pretty-looking flowers.
Another famous geranium is ivy geranium. The scientific name for the planting is P Peltatum. As the name suggests, the ivy geraniums grow in a cascading manner as against growing upright. The ivy geraniums blossom as beautiful climbers. The climbers can beautify your veranda walls, fenced corners of your balconies, and open spaces in your living rooms.
2. Amount of Sunlight the Geraniums Require
Geraniums require about 6-8 hours of sunlight in a day. Therefore, it is important that you place your geranium pots or containers in full-sun locations. When you want to place your containers indoors, you can place them facing a south-side wall or window. You can also decide to place your containers near outdoor patio locations or across sunny locations in your gardens. Sometimes the geraniums may stop blooming. The geraniums do not flower when the weather is too hot. All you have to do here is place your geranium pots in an afternoon shade so that the flowers do not receive too much heat. In this way, you will not hamper the growth of the plant if you are a part of regions that are too hot or sunny.
3. Water Requirements
You have to keep watering the geraniums regularly. However, the roots will rot if you keep the plant beds exposed to moisture-laden soil for a longer duration of time. Therefore, you must water the topmost layer of the soil only if it is dry. This way, the water easily flows through the draining holes situated at the lower layers of the pot or container. These plant beds are fairly drought tolerant and cope well. However, these plant beds cannot be allowed to get dried up entirely.
4. Allow These Plant Beds to Keep Blooming
You can have the geranium plant beds bloom for a longer duration of time if you keep deadheading faded flowers from the main plant. This is done when you have the plant stalks removed to where it intersects the stems of the plant. In order to keep your plants fully bloomed with exotic forms of geraniums, you may have to use plant scissors to cut out 1 or 2 inches of growth from the end of every stem. When you do so, the plant shoots stems that are new. This way, you can create an opportunity for growing more dense and bushy shrubs with exotic-looking geraniums that have bloomed fully.
5. Repotting Geraniums
Geraniums are flowering plants that can bloom well when the roots are closely bound to each other. Therefore, you can choose larger pots or containers only if it is really necessary. You can choose a container that is just slightly bigger than the previously used one. This way, you will not allow the plant cuttings to be held loosely. The flowers will also bloom well in a wide range of hues and sizes if you follow the repotting method correctly.
6. Application of Fertilizers
A geranium plant is a heavy feeder indeed. Therefore, you can feed these plantings with an adequate supply of fertilizers at the onset of spring and summer. However, you may have to follow the instructions that are given at the back of product labels while doing so. This is done to make sure that you supply the optimal level of fertilizers for the growing plants. And you may have to stop feeding when the summer ends.
7. Protecting the Plant Beds from Frost and Snow
The geraniums have to be protected from frosty weather conditions. You can keep them inside your homes or place the container pots near warmer porches. When you have geranium plants outdoors or in fenced areas of your gardens, then you can add frost covers to protect the plants from an excessive degree of snowfall. You can bring the geranium pots inside your homes before the onset of a hard frost and place them near a full-sun spot. Or, you can allow the plantings to go dormant by placing them in cooler porches.
8. Tips to Keep It Healthy Indoors
You can feel happy and delighted to see these flowers bloom during the dull wintery months. These flowering shrubs need an average temperature of at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit. In other words, you allow the plant beds 6-8 hours of sunlight every day. And you can further maintain these plants when you allow the top 1-2 inches of the topsoil to dry up before you start watering them. You also need to watch for incidences of pests or diseases that may impact the growth and development of these lovely flowering shrubs.
9. Watching for Infestation of Mites
During the winter season, which is there at its peak, the geranium plants that are overexposed to frosty weather conditions may be subjected to a severe form of spider-mite infestation. These are not spiders exactly, but these are creatures resembling spiders. That is why they are called spider mites. You may notice faintly shaded leaves, webbing, or specs that resemble spiders.
This is while you look at the infestation through a microscope or a pair of lenses. If you find your favourite geraniums infested with spider mites, you must remove the affected plant beds immediately. You can treat the impacted plantings using neem oil. As you are aware, neem oil is not poison, and therefore the mites may not die. However, the neem oil disrupts the biological systems of spider mites, thereby reducing their aggressive infestation. You may have to cover the plant and the plant’s top layer of soil under neem oil to avail the best results.
10. Allowing Your Plants to Go Dormant
During peak winter conditions, you can allow your geraniums to become dormant or too. You can place these plants in a basement or outdoor garage, provided the temperature doesn’t go below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The soil may dry out eventually. You may have to keep deadheading plant stalks or flowers that die off. You must keep checking on how the roots are.
You can inspect the crown of the plantings to look for any kind of rotting parts. The rotting parts of the plant can be removed using a sharp knife that is well-sterilized.
Post the winter season, you can place these plants outdoors. The geranium containers can be watered regularly. You can place these fabulous geranium flowers at locations that are warm and sunny. This way, the new shoots or leaves get exposed to ample sunlight. Once you have positioned these shrubs in the right places so that they receive sunlight, you can water them and feed them with fertilizers.
Final Thoughts
All in all, you have seen 10 ways how to grow geraniums in pots or containers. These are flowering shrubs that grow well in soil that is well-draining and can bloom well in sunny locations. Apple rose buds are exotic flowers, and you can arrange the flower cuttings in pretty-looking glass vases that can be kept at your dining tables for ornamental purposes.
You can plant them in containers indoors during the frosty weather. You have the exclusivity to keep the plants indoors or keep them dormant too. Ivy geraniums can be planted through hanging baskets to lend exotic looks to your balconies or verandahs of your living areas.
Flowers can be arranged in pots near offices or commercial establishments, as these are ornamental flowers that can lend pleasing vibes to the overall decor or ambience. These flowers are fragrant with attractive foliage too. Hence, you can plant them outdoors too.
