What I do to the stems I trim off, is put them in water in a south facing window to start rooting. When they get a good rooting system growing I plant them in soil in a plant pot and let them grow into beautiful plants that can be put in the garden along with the original plants. I usually have quite a number of plants extra. Some I give away to family and friends. I have had good look in my transplants flowering. I use an all purpose Miracle Gro fertilizer and they seem to love it. You just can't have too many geraniums in your garden. They are such a healthy and vibrant flower that lasts into the frost season of Fall. Thank you for your video.

Found this almost two years after the post - great timing.

I (illegally, but unabashedly) brought a small cutting from an ivy geranium fro the balcony of our Paris hotel. My son and I celebrated his 25th birthday there with a luncheon at the Jacques Cousteau Restaurant in the Effie Tour! Every autumn from my PA home, I bring in those ivy geraniums. I cut them back, remove any dead leaves and keep them as houseplants. Nick was 41 yesterday! I’ve made many cuttings over the years. PS. Don’t tell anyone!

I have good results when I hang them upside down on a wire clothes hanger that I've pulled into a diamond shape. I hang them in a dark basement on the water pipes. There is never a problem with mold, and I don't have to keep checking them. In January they sprout leaves and blossoms! In the spring I put them into a larger pot than the previous year and prune them back. The bigger the pot, the bigger the plant. In a really large pot the plant is almost the size of a shrub!

2022 Growing season I wintered the geraniums I purchased from the Chelan High School VOG Class at our Chelan Farmers Market. I was so trilled for my 1st attempt to be a huge success and when the first flower bloomed I squealed with delight! Thank you Susan! 07.15.2023

The blooms make a beautiful longlasting indoor bouquet!

I am suffering a touch of zone envy, lol, as I live in zone 3 (Canadian) but I have had great success with zonal geraniums, overwintering them in pots on a sunny windowsill. In March I take lots of cuttings and root them in styrofoam coffee cups, then plant them outside once it warms up, in May? usually, perhaps earlier or later, depending on whether we are having an early spring.

Those geraniums are gorgeous! Gorgeous color! And matched your jacket perfectly!!!! Thank you!

Thanks for this. I have a zonal geranium I have overwintered in my house in the pot for 30 years. It is in the same soil, which is obviously exhausted. I know it would be best to repot, and maybe I'll get around to it next spring. Despite the maltreatment it blooms year round. I do give it lots of sprinkle - on granular fertilizer, sometimes even in the winter if it looks peaky. I especially enjoy doing this as I read an article that said it couldn't be done. (take cuttings and discard the mother plant, they advised.) I also plant out bulbs that come in pots in the yard after they have bloomed, despite advise to the contrary, and most often they come back year after year in gratitude. It's fun to be a rebel, or a plant angel.

Susan, one more week until February...would you consider doing another video to show us what your geraniums currently look like, and all of the steps you’ll be taking to re-pot your plants for the upcoming growing season? Thanks so much!

My friend just brings them inside and waters them regularly and they stay healthy throughout the winter by a sunny window...they even reflower. She lives in the laurentian mountains in Canada, with a 5 month winter!

I started my geraniums by seed. Ha! Being a new gardener, I had no idea how hard it is to get them to grow here in SW Florida zone 10a. I managed to get 4 seeds of about 12 seeds to germinate. Poor things just wilt so quick. I put them in a huge, clear ziplock type of bag with a pencil as a brace to keep it off the little seedlings and they love it. When I give them a breathe of fresh air for an hour or two they wilt. I hurry up and put them back into the bag a they perk right up. If I ever get these girls to thrive like yours do, I will definitely start propagating them from then on. They are about 4 inches tall now after 2 months.

Thank you so much for this video! I just 'inherited' a bunch of geraniums from my friend who's mother passed and they were her passion. I want to keep her legacy growing :-) Thank you so much for the tips. Hopefully I will have good news to report in Feb!

I've been overwintering the same geraniums for more than ten years here in Ireland. I tidy them and bring them inside to a cool but frost free window sill and water very sparingly throughout winter. In spring I repot them adding a granular slow release plant food and water well. This works very well for me.

Geranium, one of my favourite plants, I will try this method...thanks

Loved this video! I could listen to you talk all day long--so calm and kind! I overwintered geraniums last year (I have no idea what kind) by leaving them in their pots and bringing them inside and putting them in the finished basement that is probably too warm. Still, all but 1 made it! I put them by the window and didn't cut them back and probably watered them too much, so I am looking forward to trying it again with some better information! Thank you!

Came across this almost exactly 1 year after this was posted, perfect timing! Thank you for this information!

Thanks so much for the video! I have 3 zonal geraniums that I have had for 6 or 7 years and I leave them in a pot and cover them with a large bag because our garage has windows. I water a little bit once a month and they have flourished. I don't even add new soil. I started them out at the beginning of March after trimming them down. The ones in the hanging baskets don't seem to do as well, perhaps because the potting shed is colder. This year I want to do a lot more, so I thought I would try the dry method. This is a great help.🤞🏼

Thank you Susan

Thank you I watched your 1st video since it came up in the google images when I did a search for preserving geraniums over winter and your second video came up next in the que so glad! This is the first year I will try this. I love my geraniums and hate tossing them every year not to mention having to purchase again, so thank you so much this looks easy to do.

I overwintered the same geraniums for about 15 years and then illness crept in and I couldn't do it. So I started over this year with a bunch of them. I had good luck overwintering ivy geraniums in the pot. thanks for the video.

I’ve already set a big pot of cuttings of my white zonal geranium to root, and I want to save the main plant in Winter dormancy, this year. I have a vase full of geranium flowers in my living room. Thanks for this video; this method looks easy to do!

I think the key to this is as you say at 6:22. There is most likely much that could go wrong and much you need to get right. I and others I've talked to have had no luck with this method. I'm guessing humidity is important and that leaves dried is ok but the root and stem must be kept viable, that being key to success.

Hi .. iv just potted on my cuttings to over winter in a cold frame ...i only like selective colours haha ..i agree uv got to find away to keep these plants going ur way or my way .climate makes all the differace ...water is also deadly when the temp drops ..nice to share..our tips .thank u sue

Favourite flowers

Now I know, Susan thanks, I will try because I like love Geraniums. God bless.

I just brought mine in but didn’t know what to do so thanks for the vlog perfect timing xx

I wish I saw this earlier, I just tossed all my geraniums again this year. Next year I will try this, thank you.

I bring my plants in, I have a room that has a lot of sunlight and I had one lasted me 5 years. I didn't do anything to it I just brought it in and I would feed it every so often and of course water it

I have a red velvet colored geranium that I bought in upstate PA. I cannot find it in my area outside of Philadelphia. I have taken clippings and also trimmed back the potted plants ( and brought them inside) to have them for the next year. I have had wonderful results with both. Thank you for your video. Linda, PA

My son died3 yrs ago. They were his plants so just brought them in in basement by the windows. Along January after Christmas stuff put away brought them up put in the window sill after month of light gave them some fertilizer just a little . There growing well. Outside on patio will do this again. Easy.

Thanks for the update from the previous version, I can’t wait to try this out! Happy gardening!

Ivy geraniums should be cut back, taken to the basement or darker room, water about once a month-in February introduce them to light and give them an all purpose plant food/fertilizer.

Hello Susan from the UK. Last year, I over wintered my geraniums in a plastic dustbin (oops, garbage bin) I just removed all the earth and blooms, and put the lid on. I left the bin in the back yard in a sheltered place I took them out in March this year. We had quite a few evenings of frost and the temperature was 11 degrees Celsius, the lowest for 2019. They looked awful but everyone of them survived although they took their time to bloom. This year I will try your way as I have quite a lot. Thank you for your suggestions and excellent video.

Thank you Susan, I will be saving my beautiful Geraniums this year! I will let you know results. 😇

Hi Susan, thank you for the information about over winter Geranium. I brought the whole geranium pot into the garage and as you said I water them a bit once in a while, they survive. You give me idea for one more method to try. Thanks again.

This is the first year I put geraniums in and I was just wondering what to do with them when I stumbled onto your video, Thank you so much for putting it on.

This is interesting and I may try it, but I have had great luck just leaving them in their pots and putting them in my garage to overwinter - no watering, but they have some light in the garage. I trim off any blooms and let them be. I am going on my 5th years with several and so far they seem to do well all summer! I live in SW Michigan where it does get cold!

Susan, I have successfully overwintered seed geraniums as well as the zonal geraniums using this same method in brown paper bags. I've been doing this for the past 5 years now and it works like a charm! I've also saved seed from the seed geraniums and have grown them into nice sized plants by directly seeding them into planters in late March. The only reason I tried this was because I had little volunteer geraniums sprout and grow where I had the seed geraniums growing the previous year in a raised planter bed.

In the UK , I pot them up as they are and place on a windowsill in bedrooms, bathrooms, everywhere and water a little throughout, works fine if you are happy to live among them. :)

I live in zone 6b and always make sure I have red geraniums in pots in my kitchen window all winter! They bloom all winter!

Great video Susan! I have a very high success rate with cuttings using a mixture of vermiculite and perlite 50/50 kept moist (plastic window box in a tray and regular misting, a little bottom heat during winter if you take cuttings in fall). Works fine for pelargoniums, fuchsias, helianthemums and lilac - and probably a whole lot of others I haven't tried!

Thanks for sharing your ideas. I love geraniums and will have to try this.

I’m lucky that I don’t have to do this to my pelargoniums/geraniums. They’re perennial in central CA zone 9b. I‘ve gotta 6 yr old one about 4’ tall & wide planted in ground, several others in pots ranging in age & the queen is one in a giant pot that’s about 20 yrs old. It’s 1 of the 1st plants I ever bought as a young wife & mother. It was labeled as an annual 😆. I named it Big Momma. She’s about 6’ tall including pot & soil, 4’ wide. She’s a pinkish, coral variety. Always covered in blooms despite suffering chronic bud worms every spring thru summer. (We’ve an invasive brown moth here that uses pelargoniums & petunias as host plants for thousands of eggs/larvae-it’s quite a battle every year). She’s still so gorgeous & resilient. Love that plant. She’s been w/me almost 1/2 my life, happily moving around w/us, not caring if she was on a shady apartment deck or in a bright back yard. At this point I ‘d say we’re close friends 😁. I’d pbly cry if it died! I really do love the “annual/zonal geraniums”. So pretty & so easy to grow. But I don’t buy them anymore due to the brown moth ☹️. It’s hard enough & expensive keeping the 6 I’ve got from being eaten down to nothing. If it wasn’t for our yellow jacket wasps eating so many of the moth caterpillars for me, Big Momma woulda had a much tougher battle this year! It’s great that you’re teaching colder climate folks how to keep them cuz I think they’re one of the unsung heroes of the garden. They deserve more accolades & attention! Thanks for always sharing beneficial info!

My father n law use knock the soil off the roots of his geraniums, hang them upside down, didn't do anything else to them over the winter and hung them in his basement and then about Feb Mar he replanted them in pots when it was warm enough he took them out and replanted them outside, they were some of the prettiest geraniums every year!

very beautiful dark coral color! explanation was simple & easy to understand and I can do it!

I bring the cut off blossoms and enjoy them in the house for about 10 days!

My Grandmother had Geraniums that she had for years ... I never learned how to do it thank you for this video. If you notice ... many many plants begin to grow after the Solstice. Put the cuttings in a glass container in the sun to root and plant next year

Wow. I'm in San Francisco and the place right next to me had a big geranium plant nobody watered or anything. It doesn't rain here for months! I finally started watering and taking lots of clippings. No more dead flowers and the clippings are doing great! I put a lot of dead leaves and gorilla hair in the pot and around the mother plant. It was there at least 2 years with zero attention. No "over wintering" ... This is zone 15!

Hi Susan, I watched your video last summer and I overwintered my Geraniums. It really worked. I couldn't believe how they started growing in February. My question, when do you start preparing them for the carton. I am in zone 6. I don't want to wait too long by keeping them outside in the cold. Thank you, I am so glad I found your video.

I would bring my geraniums into the shed this winter. Thanks

Thank you my grandfather had a greenhouse were he grew geraniums and shrubs

Great video! I tried it last year and it worked great

Can't wait to try your technique on my mom's geraniums...it would be wonderful to save her money. When my father-in-law was alive, he'd take his ivy geraniums inside his 'shop' where they were near a window and had a heated environment as well as his shop lights which were fluorescent. He'd prune back a bit but not much and kept those alive year after year and always had a stunning display of them every summer.

Cool, something we have done here is store them in a plastic bag upright covered in pine shavings not seal the top but tape the center of the bag shut store in a dark closet, most of the plant though dies but some of it survives sometimes just a branch here and there, but im not taking them out til may due to not room for potting, and putting them out side directly they look ratty a while but start growing very soon even the tiniest of branch that has thickness, if its dry under it just cute the dead part of put that in the ground leaving some stick out, and has worked great. Your method would be preferred but we have no basement or cellar, just an idea for others in the same situation.

Thank you Susan, I got a Zonal Geranium two a weeks ago and it is so beautiful I want to over winter it.

Thanks for the video and information.

I left my Ivy Geranium in the pot near a window over winter last year, giving it a little water occasionally. It did great!

This is so.easy compared to articles I' ve read!

Nice.... Good methods... I think I am going to try it this coming winter... Thank you for sharing... 🍀

I'm from north of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and I remember my mother keeping geraniums alive all winter long. They did quite well and she would move some of them outdoors in the spring. I don't think she did anything special other than water them. They always looked healthy. I've got one geranium to survive over winter but feel I could have done a lot better. I'll try to change what I did for it this time. The year before I had a few more in the house over winter but they got caught when we had a sudden dump of snow and everything froze.

Wonderful video!

All of those trimmings of the Vining geranium can be just stuck into the ground in another pot and they will root giving you more plants. NEVER just throw away geranium trimmings...they root very well by just sticking them into the ground. and they make cute extra plants for you.

What a fun and personable video! This is the first year that I took my geraniums indoors. I just potted mine and am hoping to make cuttings, but I’d really like to try this method next year! (I’ve got too many plants to over winter! Haha)

i bonsai'ed a pink geranium this year for my daughter. kept the root base small and keeping the flowers and leafs pruned back. will see how well it does over winter under my lights

Excellent video. Thank you,

Hi Susan! I don’t have lots of room either, but I (used to) pull rank and elbow other things out of the way. Now, my daughter’s cat eats the leaves so I stopped when they moved in!

When I lived in New England I would clean them and hang them from the beams in the basement. Now, I'm in the South, so they overwinter in the garden shed.

Great advice. I will certainly try this method.

Thank you Susan ...Very informative

I just finished cutting down and fill g three large wheelie trash bins full of geraniums and pelargoniums that have basically grown wild here and become a pest, but squeezing out all the other flowers. But, I elsewhere in my state, and I I couldn't even get one pathetic common red geranium to grow. They seem to love hot sun and can also tolerate shade but hate the cold, but though they might grow in doors over winter, in a sunnier spot eg a porch or sun room.

My geraniums overwinter outside in their pots or the ground but I live in CA, not sure where you are but my mom told me how her grandmother would hang them in her basement during the winter in the midwest

I have found that in a dry climate this does not work. I cut my geraniums back drastically, put them in my dark garage (about 8 degrees is the lowest over the winter) and stop watering them. In about Feb/Mar they will send out shoots. At this time, I get them out, put them in a sunny spot (I have a greenhouse) and start watering them. I keep them pruned for a couple of months but in April, I let them grow and they will be flowering by the end of May.

Thanks a lot for this helpful video!

Thank you! Who knew you could do this? Certainly not me. Will try. Great video!

Last fall I took my geranium plant inside after having changed the soil. I didn’t have any cool room for it since I alive in an apartment, so put it in a sunny window and it grew and bloomed throughout the winter. Now it’s still blooming and beautiful on my balcony. I bought different kinds of geranium plants this summer and hope that they will survive and grow like the first one. Why would anybody throw out a geranium plant (if there is enough space to take it inside)?

외국에선 그렇게 겨울동안 보관 햐는 군요 생명력이 대단하네요

Great info Susan, thanks

Interesting method! However, I overwinter them in a non-heated room and they have been doing great for eight years.

I overwintering a ivy geranium last winter. It lived but did not do well this summer

Extremely helpful video! Thank you so much for doing it! 😊🌺🌿🍄

I hung the geraniums upside down in my basement. I've never seen such beautiful plants/flowers the next year. Unfortunately, not all homes have a basement.

I LOVE geraniums!!!!

This was SO very clearly explained. Thank you. QUESTION: In early February, when you pot up the geraniums and feed with fish emulsion fertilizer, do the pots stay in the basement or do you take them up to the house? If you take them upstairs, do you put them in bright light? Many thanks.

Wouldn't DARE DREAM consign my beloved/and some decade old gerries to the basement. Have overwintered them in winter sun window for years..3rd time charm indeed! PS no fertilizer til time change...

Thank you!

Do you have a video of when you plant them on February and how they look and what to do?

Photos of what is normal during the storage would be helpful. I've done the paper bag method and lost almost every plant.

Hi Susan, love this video. I followed this process last year with great success. Just wondering when you start boxing the Geraniums. I live in northern Ohio and the geraniums are still so beautiful.

Thank you. Very usefull !

Thankyou so much i will try that too 👌

Thank you for geranium video. it is very detailed and helps me with ideas for next winter.

BTW thank you for your lovely videos

Hi Susan, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time to share all of your gardening expertise. It's very appreciated ☺️ Question... I have a gorgeous, massive Citronella plant that I just don't have the heart to throw out. Would this technique work for over wintering Citronella as well? Thanks again 😊

Wow, your vegetable garden is beautiful! Do you deal with a lot of pests on them? It is always interesting 🤔 to hear all the natural ways people deal with pests in the garden. Great job! Thank you 🙏 for sharing!

Thank you Susan for the information. I wanted to know do we have to give any food for them while they are inside.

Thank you so much for nice information, what about roses and hydrangea? Please advise

photos of how they look during the process would be helpful.

I'm in zone 6b-7 and don't have a basement. I've been able to overwinter amaryllis bulbs in the garage by either keeping them in the pots or putting individual bulbs in burlap. If the temps in the garage get in the 30's is that too cold to do this method for geraniums? How about putting a blanket over the box just in case? Great video!

I use to knock the dirt off and hang them upside down in the basement until the following spring. I didn't trim them at all before putting them in the basement. Don't know if this would help with the ivy geraniums or not. Good luck.