Geraniums - Pelargoniums

I recently had the opportunity to speak at an event honouring a group of people whose gardens were nominated for recognition. I was allowed to choose my own topic and I decided to talk on how I went about learning more on the topic of Horticulture. I then spent some time showing slides that illustrated what I learned from the sources from which I learned about the topic.

I didn't mention the annual geranium in my talk but this was one of my first ventures into the world of cuttings. When we were first married, we would take cuttings from the previous years supply of geraniums and tried to coax them through the Winter. We would often lose half our crop, probably because of the way we started the cuttings.

We tried rooting them in water but that just didn't work for us as the cuttings would rot and die. We tried putting them right in the soil and that worked to some degree but we again lost a significant number of the cuttings for some reason. It wasn't until years later that I mentioned my difficulty to a Master Gardener that I learned to allow the cutting to dry overnight in the refrigerator before putting them in soil that I was most successful. Now most if not all the cuttings survive. I learned too from the same Master Gardener that starting geraniums from purchased seed is almost always 100% successful.

I know that many gardeners will dry out their plants, hang them in a cold cellar and repot them the following year again with mixed success but I'm doing alright with cuttings now that I give them 24 hours to heal before potting them up.