Bringing the Geraniums in for the Winter

The changing seasons have their own rituals, and as an avid gardener, I’ve noticed my own rituals that mark the passage of one season to another. One of those rituals is bringing geraniums inside for the winter.

I save my geraniums from year to year. After a few years, they’re usually too large to bring indoors, but I take cuttings and grow  geraniums from cuttings so that next spring, I will have plenty of new plants for my window boxes and planters.

Some of the geraniums are in pots small enough to move directly into the house. I always take the garden hose and turn it on full blast, aiming a steady stream of water at the underside of the rims of the flower pots. That’s a prime spot for spiders, and many times a few will tumble out.  Sometimes they lay their egg sacs under the rim of the pot, and these I always remove. Trust me, I don’t want to start a “colony” inside the house!

Speaking of spiders, if you live in an area with either black widow spiders (as I do) or brown recluse spiders, take special precautions to check pots, plants and garden ornaments for spiders before taking them indoors for the winter. I had an awful scare when I moved a garden statue into the garage for repainting this fall.  I removed one of the metal support rods from its base, and guess what popped out?  Yes, a black widow spider. Luckily it was cold that day and she was sluggish, but it was an excellent reminder to me that I live in an area where they are common, and I need to be ever-vigilant when working in the garden.

I check my plants for other types of insects, too, before moving them indoors. If the geraniums are in the window boxes, I dig them out and use fresh sterile potting soil.  This also minimizes the potential for bringing insects indoors.

Lastly, I give the newly repotted plants a good drink of water and place trays underneath each pot to catch the drips. I like to keep my plants in a bright east-facing room; it’s plenty of light for most house plants and annuals such as geraniums, but it isn’t so much that it burns the leaves.

Bringing plants indoors before the first frost is definitely one of my new rituals here in Virginia. Next up will be cutting down the morning glory vines from the trellis, and then cutting back the butterfly bushes. And then I know that winter is finally here!