The National Garden Bureau wants to see everyone’s home blossom with geraniums. Each year the bureau selects a flower and a vegetable to promote, and in 1998 the geranium is the flower they will spotlight.<\/p>\n
Geraniums include a diverse array of garden flowers from the highly double-flowered hybrid annual types that give season-long color, to ivy geraniums noted for their cascading growth habit, and scented geraniums grown primarily for the remarkably fragrant oils contained in the foliage. But the common name of “geranium” is actually a misnomer that is more correctly applied to a related group of hardy perennial flowers that make up the botanical geraniums. (The true geraniums are sometimes called “crane’s bill.”)<\/p>\n
The popular plants commonly called geraniums are known botanically as pelargonium and are thought to originate in South Africa. Several different explorers are credited with bringing various types of geraniums back to other parts of the world.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t all that long ago that gardeners paid rather premium prices for bedding geraniums because in the past, the hybrid double-flowered types were only able to be propagated reliably by cuttings. This is a more expensive, labor-intensive method of propagation than using seed. It wasn’t until the 1960s that hybrid geraniums from seed were brought to commercial production. Today, most geraniums produced for the bedding plant industry are grown from hybrid seed.<\/p>\n
Bedding geraniums are sun lovers that perform best in a rich, well-drained, loamy soil. Geraniums are considered heavy-feeders meaning they demand frequent supplemental fertilization in order to keep their green foliage and season-long blooming.<\/p>\n
Though we typically grow bedding geraniums as annuals, some gardeners like the challenge of trying to keep the plants over winter. Cuttings can be taken before the end of the season, rooted in sand, vermiculite or quality potting mix, and then raised as a houseplant through the winter. Or, plants can be dug from the garden before killing frost, cut back about halfway, and then potted as a houseplant for the winter. Give these plants as much sun as possible once they are established in their new container.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"