Inexpensive bags with geranium seeds are often available on the Internet, in garden centers and hardware stores. This allows you to grow your summer geranium splendor for balcony boxes and tubs yourself without having to buy the plants later for expensive money. With our instructions, you too can grow geraniums!
Geraniums can be grown from seed with a little patience
Sow geranium seeds
To ensure that your geraniums continue to bloom this summer, you should sow them very early in the year - ideally in January, but at the latest in early February. Use nutrient-poor and germ-free potting soil for the cultivation.
- Sow the geranium seeds in planters with potting soil.
- Alternatively, you can also place individual seeds in small seed pots,
- then you save yourself the later pricking.
- Geraniums germinate in the sun, so only thinly sieve the substrate over the grains.
- Place the planters in an indoor greenhouse
- or cover them with clear film.
- The seeds germinate best at temperatures between 20 and 22 °C.
- So put the vessels in a bright and warm place.
Geranium seeds usually germinate within 10 to 20 days.
Care for seedlings properly
As soon as the seeds have emerged, you should periodically air them, otherwise the seedlings will begin to rot. First, only open the ventilation slots, then after a few days also remove the lid of the planter - at first for an hour a day, later for longer. You should also keep the seedlings cooler now, otherwise they will start to wilt. Then they only form long and weak shoots, which later do not bear any flowers. Temperatures around 15 °C are ideal here - so don't necessarily put them on the windowsill over the heater.
- You can prick out the young geraniums as soon as they have four leaves.
- Now you can transplant them into a larger pot with nutrient-rich compost soil.
- The shoot tip breaks off as soon as the young plant is about 20 centimeters high.
- This stimulates branching and ensures that the geranium develops many shoots.
- With fertilization you can - carefully! - start about four to six weeks after germination.
- Be sure to keep seedlings and young plants slightly moist at all times
- Spraying is always better than watering.
tips
Harden off the young plants before finally putting them outdoors. You should put the geraniums outside as soon as it is warm and sunny enough and no more frost is to be expected - but only for a few hours at first. Extend these times from day to day until the plants eventually stay out overnight as well.