A Story - "Deidre" and starting Geraniums from Cuttings

A Story

Deidre

"You remember Deidre?" Ian's sister asked.  "She looks so happy in this post.  30th anniversary.  Three grandchildren."

Ian sighed, smiled. She'd be a wonderful grandma. 

 Twenty years ago.  How cliched to fall for your co-worker; yet one day, as they bounced around ideas, he knew she would be his only life love.  Whispered word was she and her husband were struggling.

Wrestling, he weighed a fractured family for her girls, anger in divorce, with his longing to cherish her.  Could he give enough?

Ian quit the job and prayed her marriage would survive.

Forever, his love burned, heart ached.

This is a grouping of, I think, four pots of geraniums that I grew last summer.  I fertilized them regularly and kept taking off any buds until the beginning of July.  That made the plants branch nicely and grow lots of leaves to feed the plant.  When they finally got to bloom, it was a nice show.  They were in 8" pots.
 

In the fall, I brought in one pot.  For about a month in October, it was just parked in the porch with very limited light.  I barely watered it. I just wanted it to keep limping along.  Sometime in November I put it near a window but still I kept the watering minimal.  It's obviously having a rest.

In February, it started to pick up and I fertilized it and watered it more regularly. It put out some nice growth.

Now I am taking off shoots and rooting them up.  The shoots are about 3" long and I take off all but about 3 leaves.  I dip the shoots in rooting hormone. I don't dip them into the rooting hormone container but make a small pile of rooting hormone on a plastic lid so that I don't contaminate the rooting hormone. You can root geraniums without rooting hormone but it increases the rate of success.

I want to have about 18 or 20 new plants and I have limited window space so I decided to put about 6 cuttings in a 4 or 5" pot. I cover them loosely with a plastic bag and put them in a bright spot but not in a window.

These ones are about a week old and I think they have already rooted so they don't need a bag anymore. They are pretty crowded but they will only be in the pots for about 6 weeks.  I can always fertilize them if they start turning yellow. When I go to plant them outside, I will put the pot in a bucket of water to wash the soil off the roots and allow me to gently tease them apart.

Whether I plant them directly in the ground or in a pot, I will fertilize them at planting time with a liquid fertilizer high in phosphorus, the middle number.  That will stimulate root growth. Later I will feed them with slow release balanced fertilizer.