How to overwinter your beautiful geranium

Geranium is one of the most popular annual plants and they are the easiest flowering plant to grow.

This annual plant needs to conserve in the winter season. Here in this post, I’ll explain how to overwinter geranium in detail.

Let’s get started

Table of Contents

How geranium looks like

Before knowing how to overwinter geranium plants let’s see a few important characteristics of this beautiful flowering plant.

Photo source: Surely Shirly

Zonal geranium (Pelargonium) are annual plants in hardy zones 3-8.

In the gardening zones 9-10, they grow perennial also known as tropical geranium (cranesbill).

Zonal geraniums are different from tropical geraniums, don’t get confused the name “zonal” comes from the stripes on the leaves.

The difference between seed geranium and zonal geranium are

The seeds of geranium are smaller in size than zonal geranium and they have smaller flowers.

In the post, overwinter of seeds geranium is not explained. The method is only applicable to zonal geranium.

Related post: Best annual plants to grow in the house

One of my friends has potted geranium, she simply brings the plant indoors and placed it in the window shade with little in the winter.

The plant becomes leggy and pathetic looking but this works for her.

I don’t do this because my geranium plants are in the ground, I have to first transplant them in the pot.

And also I don’t have a window with light plus I don’t want to mess indoors.

I shared this case study as an option if you have these conditions. Now I’ll share an effective method to store geranium in the winter.

This method is practiced by most of the gardeners and they see wonderful yield.

Toss off geranium from the ground and shake them hard, to remove most of the dirt from the roots.
lay them in the newspaper and let them dried in the light
Don’t leave geranium too long in the sunlight otherwise, they get shrivel.
After they dried, take a grocery bag, put the roots inside it, and hang them in a basket.
To overwinter geranium so they go dormant, you have to store them in a dark room with temperatures around 50-60 degrees.
Don’t need to water them, geranium literally takes a nap and goes dormant.

You can start potting overwintered geranium from the middle of the march.
At the start, you can grow them inside or if you live in a warmer region then grow outside.
Take you’re overwintering geranium and cut brown and brittle part of the plant.
A bit of green part should be visible in the stem.
Dip one end of the stem in the pot with rich soil and no fertilizer.
Pour water to keep the soil moist you can put a tray underneath of pot so that water doesn’t fall.
Place the pot in a sunny spot you feel like you’re watering a dead plant but after 4 weeks you’ll start seeing a few green leaves.

Propagating from the stem cutting is another great way to overwinter geranium.

You can propagate geranium anytime.

Cut a section of stem about 3-4 inches long just below the left node.
Remove leaves of the bottom half of the stem cutting.
Take a pot that has a drainage hole in the bottom.
Add seed starting mix about a half-inch from the top.
Dip one end of the stem in rooting hormone powder and simply sow your stem in the pot.
Water your plant but don’t overwater.
It takes around 6 weeks for a cutting to grow roots.
After about 8 weeks it’s a good idea to transplant little plant in a larger pot.

What do you think?