Putting Geraniums to Work Outdoors

Flower bed, border planting, edging, window box, patio planter anywhere in the garden geraniums are at home so long as they have five hours or more sunlight daily and a soil that does not become water-logged. Geranium foliage is handsome and with flowers too, who could ask for more? Geraniums have clean, bushy growing habits that make pruning or pinching small problems.

If your geraniums have given poor flowers and growing them no longer seems worthwhile, buy a new stock of currently recommended varieties—you’ll be in for a real shot in the arm from your geraniums! For a special treat, plant a patio box with several different scented-leaf geraniums, one or two with fancy foliage, and an ivy-leaf variety. Set it on your back porch steps, or by the front walk where you can catch a whiff of the pungent odors as you pass.

If your garden soil packs into a brick—like ball, add peat moss until a handful of the loam will crumble in your hand after being squeezed. Bone meal is always safe and satisfactory for geraniums, but does not produce such spectacular plants as the experienced use of some good, well-balanced fertilizer analyzing 5-5-5. Liquid food is a good geranium fertilizer that will produce robust, richly flowering plants.

When the weather turns impossible, July-fashion, geraniums will keep right on growing and blooming if they are watered thoroughly as often as needed to keep the soil moist. A light mulch of dried grass clippings will help conserve moisture. Window boxes, patio tubs and pots dry out almost daily in torrid weather.

Cut off old blooms and yellow leaves so your geraniums won’t be mistaken for those of Peter Tumbledown.

Contributed by E McDonald

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