The sun was trying to shine between the clouds today and it looked like spring but the wind was bitter cold. My green thumb was itching to do some work in the garden but it was just too cold. So I did the next best thing and gardened indoors.
I need to clean house, and all the geranium pots on my window sills have been dropping dry leaves and old flowers on the sills and floors making a mess. I decided to give them their annual spring trimmings before I did the cleaning. I took them one at a time to the window by the kitchen sink and carefully cut back the stems to a growing leaf and pulled out all the dead leaves. Then I watered them well, misted the stems and leaves and spread a small pot of fresh potting soil on top of the dirt in the pot to snug up the stems a bit. Then I covered each pot with a white plastic grocery bag to form a little greenhouse effect to keep the stems moist. I am hoping this little hot house for each pot will encourage the dormant buds on the stems to leaf out in the humidity and get them big and bushy before I want to plant them outside in late May.
Then I took all the cuttings and stripped them down to two leaves and planted them in little pots of fresh potting soil and misted them and covered the pots (five or six at a time) with the plastic grocery bags for humidity put them in a sunny window and hope some of them will take root and make more pretty plants for this summer.
Do you think it will work? I have never been this thorough with the spring cleaning of the geraniums and have had hit and miss luck with cuttings. Maybe the little greenhouses will be the answer to having success. Stay tuned for the results in a few months.
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