Cutting it

Last year on one of our many visits to local garden centres we spotted some pelargoniums that were being sold off. We needed something to prettify the summer house and so we decided to buy some. We also bought a couple for a pot on the patio.

The patio pot was taken into the greenhouse for over winter and the others were just left in the summer house. They all survived so I decided that the time had come to cut them back.

The benefits of cutting back are twofold - it rejuvenates the parent plant to stop it becoming leggy and it produces cutting material.

The trimmings were tidied up. Any dead leaves and flowers were removed and the pieces were shortened by cutting just below a leaf node, (the area where the leaves join the stem). All the leaf stipules - the small leafy bits at the base of the leaf stems - that would otherwise be buried were removed and most of the leaves.

Each plant produced between four and six cuttings.

To provide good drainage I like to place cuttings in a mix of half compost and half vermiculite.

The cuttings from each variety were placed around the edge if a small pot and placed in the house on a windowsill.

The compost will be kept slightly damp as pelargoniums don't like to be too wet.
The parent plants look rather sorry but should soon start to grow away.

A digression:

Copyright: Origieggl post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett