It doesn’t have to be difficult to keep your geraniums healthy, strong, and blooming all summer long. If you follow a few simple care and maintenance guidelines, you can enjoy beautiful blooms from late spring through the first frost!
When it comes to summertime blooms, geraniums have been a perennial favorite. Planting them directly in flowerbeds or filling pots, containers, and hanging baskets with big color is easy thanks to their long, showy stems of showy flowers.
Furthermore, geraniums are free of pests and insects. They’re so effective at repelling cabbage worms that they’re commonly grown alongside cabbage and cauliflower in many vegetable gardens.
Geraniums come in a wide range of heights, from a few inches to several feet or more, depending on the variety. And aren’t they gorgeous? White, red, pink, purple, salmon, and even orange geraniums can be found.
By mid-summer, many gardeners find themselves struggling with geraniums. Leggy plants and underwhelming blooms can occur if proper care isn’t given to the plants. Fortunately, they can be revived with little effort.
If you follow a few simple guidelines, your geraniums will be in full bloom and thriving in no time, and they’ll keep doing so well into the fall.
Geraniums: How to Keep Them Blooming – 3 Simple Tips!
Most gardeners consider geraniums annuals, but the plant is in fact a perennial one. For those who live in zones 10 and 11, where the winters never see a hard frost or freeze, this is true.
However, because they are perennials by nature, there are a few key factors to consider if you want them to bloom more profusely as an annual. Pinching back the fast-growing plants is the first step in achieving a more compact and robust growth pattern.
A plant that can produce more blooms over the course of the growing season, as well as a more dense set of blooms.
1. How to Keep Geraniums Blooming: Pinching Back Geraniums
If left to grow on their own, geraniums can become leggy and sparse. For example, in pots, containers, or hanging baskets where they thrive.
Because of the limited amount of soil available, plants are forced to spread out as quickly as possible. As a result, pinching back stem growth is essential in order to force denser and thicker growth.
Pinching back the growth on stems by a half-inch to a third of an inch is the best way to get started early in the season. Scissors, garden pruners, or even your fingernails with sharp tips work well for this.
Multiple shots can be encouraged by pinching back the plant’s trimmed branches. It’s never too late to pinch back mature plants in the middle of summer. As a result, the plant grows much more robustly and densely. One that can produce many more flowers and blooms.
2. It’s easy to keep your geraniums blooming by deadheading spent flowers.
Deadheading geraniums begin as soon as the flowers appear and begin to open. Many annuals and perennials require regular deadheading (removing spent blooms) in order to maintain a constant supply of blooms.
Even when it comes to geraniums, it is usually the most important factor in preventing them from blooming throughout the season. If the old blooms and stems aren’t removed, the plant will continue to waste energy and resources on dying flowers.
New blooms, shoots, and flowers require energy, and this energy must be available. A bloom and stem should be removed when they begin to fade and die. If you’re going to remove a plant’s entire bloom stem, make sure you don’t just cut the flower head off.
Redirecting energy from old blooms and stems to new ones prevents the plant from wasting any of its resources.
Always remove any wilting or damaged foliage from the plant in addition to deadheading. Plants expend a great deal of energy trying to repair damaged foliage, just as they do with old blooms.
3. How to Keep Geraniums Blooming with Fertilizing and Watering
Geraniums can benefit greatly from a regular dose of all-purpose fertilizer, even though they are not heavy soil feeders. For those who are growing in containers or baskets, where soil space and nutrient availability are constrained, this is especially important.
Fertilizing in small, frequent doses is preferable to applying a large, one-time bolus of nutrients. Maintaining a steady rate of growth allows the plant to devote its extra energy to flowering rather than large foliage growth.
Every 21 to 28 days, apply a small amount of an all-purpose liquid fertilizer. When applied as liquid fertilizer, nutrients are quickly absorbed by the plant’s roots and leaves. Mixing at half the recommended rate will keep the dose light.
Keep Your Geraniums Blooming Longer By Watering Wisely
Finally, watering is critical to the development of blooms as well as their persistence. New flower production will be slowed or even halted in a plant that is under underwater stressed.
You will need to water baskets and containers more frequently than geraniums growing in flowerbeds. Due to the fact that they dry out more quickly, this is the main reason. However, the roots of geraniums should not be left in water for long periods of time in either setting.
Geraniums do better with larger amounts of water applied less frequently. As a result, the plant’s roots grow deeper and it becomes stronger.
Use the tip of your index finger to feel the soil texture before watering. Allow the soil to dry out before watering if you feel any moisture in the ground with your fingertip.
