Where to start: Buying your first plant
When I started growing geraniums, I bought small plants at garden sales; when the country houses Open to the public, they often sell fragrant geraniums. They used to be hard to find in everyday garden nurseries, but nowadays you can go online and there are tons of places that sell them. To begin with, it’s easiest to buy small plants that are ready to go – plug plants, as they’re called. When you are more experienced, you can start growing them from cuttings, but there is no need to rush it.
Getting them potted
What you do is get a larger flower pot than the pot that the plant comes in. Fill it with a mixture of potting compost and light gravel so it doesn’t get too heavy. Shake your soil, put your plant in, don’t press it down too hard, then give it a good soak in water and go from there.
Over the years I’ve tried many different things with soil, and I’ve only learned not to use potting compost on its own, because it sinks down and becomes too heavy, and geraniums like very light soil. I also put a little rock or a piece of broken pottery in the bottom to drain the water. If their roots get too wet, they really don’t like it. And obviously the pot must have a hole in the bottom to drain. Light soil, nice mix – that’s the thing.
Watering: Less is more
Once you have a plant, you want to make sure you don’t water it again until it’s really dry and thirsty. The easiest way to kill a geranium is to overwater it. And in winter, they want even less water than usual.
Where to put them
Place them on a sunny windowsill or outside in the summer. They are very happy after it snows. After mid-May or so, you’re usually pretty safe to keep them outside in a nice sunny patch. Or, if you’re lucky, in a greenhouse all year round.
You want to be careful not to choose something like the climbing variety that is obviously taken over by the kitchen sink. When you go to a website to buy a geranium, like any plant, it always says it grows 50 centimeters, 80 centimeters or whatever. Some geraniums grow really large and others stay quite compact, so you just want to check what your preference is.
giving food
During the summer months, geraniums take some food with their water. You can buy seaweed fertilizer, or it can be tomato feed or just plant food. Be careful not to give too strong a dose to begin with. I have a problem with it. I doubled the amount thinking my plants would grow twice as fast and I killed them. Just give them the correct amount written on the bottle, occasional water instead of overwatering and some sun. Honestly, once they take off, they’re amazing.
