Geranium Blog

Getting Back to Normal

Praying Mantis on Pelargonium 'Lime'

This week I've been moving the potted plants out of the jungle on the side patio and back to their normal location on the back patio. Grouping the pots as we did gave the spiders a lovely place to build their webs, so all the pots were cleaned off with a wisk broom. All the plants needed some grooming, too.

I was delighted to find a particularly plump praying mantis on the Lime Geranium. Is it too much to hope it's a female soon to lay eggs?

Erodium Disaster

Nearly dead erodium - Oh, the Horror!

Most of my container plants survived vacation nicely, but not the Erodium. Just a few weeks ago, it was lush and full. But while I was gone, it died a mysterious death - almost. There are still some live plantlets in the pot. I am moving them to new pots with fresh soil. The reason I say the death was mysterious is that sitting right next to this pot was another pot of Erodium and it is still vigorous and happy!

Erodium reichardii 'Lisa'

Erodium is a genus of the family Geraniaceae.

Vacation Plant Survival

Container plants were grouped to catch spray from sprinkers

We are back home from our travels. After checking on the guinea pigs and killing a massive spider in the sink, I headed outside to see about the garden - especially the geraniums. I was amazed at how well the container plants had come through the experience. Here's what we did:

The week before we left, my husband checked the sprinker system to make sure we had good spray coverage. We grouped the container plants on a small side patio, tallest in the center. As you can see, we came home to a jungle.

Welcome to the jungle

I also took a selection of smaller potted plants over to my Mom's house for her to watch. This was to avoid having a "single point of failure". The geraniums that she kept are okay, too, of course. I was tickled to find that Pelargonium 'Old Scarlet Unique' and P. ionidiflorum were both still blooming even though temperatures hit 110 while we were gone! These geraniums are going to stay with her for a couple more days while I get caught up with myself.