Overwintering Geraniums – update

For the past couple of years, I’ve been overwintering geraniums. I used to toss the plants onto the compost pile at the end of the garden season. I’ve always hated wasting them and soon discovered they’re not all that difficult to overwinter. Hooray!

You might recall that I’ve filmed some videos on overwintering geraniums, which have been really popular. I guess that means I wasn’t the only one who wanted to know how to do it!

Update on a problem that a reader experienced

I will post the videos below but wanted to give you an important update. I recently heard from a reader who experienced a problem. He started overwintering his geraniums for the first time ever about a month ago. He checked on them a few days ago and was horrified to discover many of them had mold on them.

He asked me how that could happen. I remembered an extra step I had to take this year before storing my geraniums for the winter. I let the plants dry out for 24 to 48 hours before boxing them up. Then I moved them down to my basement.

Why my geraniums didn’t have any problems:

As you know, we’ve had an extremely wet fall. It turns out that my reader’s plants were very wet when he put them into a box. And in my case, the plants’ leaves weren’t wet but the soil was incredibly damp. I had knocked off the potting soil from their roots. Then I left the plants just lying on one of my greenhouse benches for about a day and a half. At that point, the plants’ roots felt nice and dry. If my plants had been wet, I would also have done this.

This information isn’t in my video because the potting soil was dry when I knocked it off the roots. I didn’t give it a second thought. If you’ve had problems with your plants developing mold or rotting, this is likely why. I definitely wanted to bring this to your attention.

OK, here are my videos for those of you interested in seeing the process you go through. If you are already overwintering your geraniums, don’t forget to check on them once a month!

Video #1:

Video #2:

Video #3:

Video #4:

Video #5: