Tips from experienced gardeners, how to feed geraniums for lush flowering?

Today, geranium is one of the most popular flowers in circles, both amateur gardeners and professionals. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, it does not require exotic conditions, it grows quickly enough, and the period of its rapid flowering lasts quite a long time.

Secondly, it can decorate both the windowsill of a city apartment and the club of a suburban area. The beauty of geranium buds cannot be disputed, however, in order to enjoy it as long as possible, some rules for feeding and caring for geraniums should be taken into account during this period. We will consider them in detail in this article.

Flower description

Geranium is quite common indoor flower in Russia. This plant is easy to care for and propagate it will not be difficult (for more information on how to care for geraniums in a pot, see here). Varieties and types of geraniums there are countless quantities.

Many lovers create a whole bright and fragrant collection and greenhouses of geraniums at home or on the garden site.

Geranium is a perennial plant. The height of its stems is about 50 cm. The color of the leaves, as a rule, is a saturated green or dark green color ... Geranium flowers are very bright, depending on the variety, large or not so, can be collected in inflorescences.

Reference! A distinctive feature of geraniums is an unusual smell. Its leaves exude a refreshing aroma remotely resembling mint or lemon. On the leaves there is a drawing, which happens in the form of a white border or stripes of various colors.

What is better to water?

The watering regime of geraniums depends on the time of year.

Summer

During the summer heat, the plant should be abundantly watered to comfortably survive the period of high temperatures. Optionally, 1-3 times a week, as the soil dries.

However, do not overdo it and out of great concern over-fill the bush, it can heal the rot of the root system, and the plant will die. Take a look at the behavior of the plant.

If you notice that the leaves have wilted and in some places rot has appeared on them or, for example, gray mold, the stem blackens, this indicates that watering needs to be urgently reduced. Many flower growers rightly rank geraniums as arid plants, because they come from South Africa.

At the same time, the worse the watering of the plant is, the less it will delight and bloom poorly. Therefore, you just need to monitor the earthen lump, and water the plant as it dries. In summer, the earth can dry out every day, or maybe every other day.

In winter

With the onset of cold weather, geranium, like other plants, falls into "hibernation". Therefore, compared with the summer period, watering should be reduced by half, namely 1 time in 10 days.

If the soil moisture in winter in geraniums is higher than moderate, then this will inevitably lead to the death of the plant.

Watch a video about the rules of watering geraniums:

You can learn more about how to care for home geranium in order to preserve it in the winter in this material.

What is top dressing and why is it needed?

Important! Enriching the nutrition of flowers is additionally extremely necessary, especially if they do not grow in open ground, as they will not be able to independently receive additional nutrition from natural sources.

If you go get your pet geraniums abundant and bright flowering, then without making additional dressings just can not do.

How to fertilize a plant, as well as folk and store products for this

The easiest way is to go to a flower shop, where a specialist will advise you in detail and give recommendations on choosing a high-quality fertilizer designed specifically for geranium with all its features. Most likely, your choice will stop at a nutrient solution for flowering indoor plants.

In order to choose the ideal feeding for geraniums, you need to navigate in the composition of such trace elements as:

• manganese;
• nitrogen;
• zinc;
• potassium;
• copper;
• boron;
• phosphorus;
• calcium;
• iron.

You can find out more about how to feed and when to use fertilizers here.

Fertilizer Rules

Based on many years of experience, professional flower growers have identified some simple rules for applying fertilizer to a pot of geraniums and how to water it so that it blooms magnificently:

1. If the pot of geraniums stands in place flooded with sun, you should wait a bit with fertilizer. First of all, you should put the pot in the shade and give the plant a couple of hours to recover.

   Recommendation! And only after a while, start feeding and apply liquid or granular fertilizer. Such precautions are related to the fact that in extreme heat this plant is under stress and there is no need to feed it anything else.

2. It is also important to pay attention to the degree of soil moisture in the pot with geraniums before applying any type of fertilizer. This is necessary to avoid a painful burn of the roots of the plant.
3. Feeding geraniums is allowed only in the warm season. Fertilizers are applied from May to September with a frequency of once every two weeks.

To bloom profusely at home

An excellent feeding of the house can serve as a wood hall. To prepare an aqueous solution for feeding, 1 tablespoon of ash is diluted in 1 liter and watered with soil in a pot. The water for the solution should be warm, not lower than 20 ° C, so that the particles dissolve as much as possible and give the beneficial and nutrients to the plant as much as possible.

Iodine, which can be found in every home medicine cabinet, is also useful as a fertilizer for the abundant flowering of room geraniums. It accelerates the formation of inflorescences and increases the number and volume of buds. The solution is prepared quite simply: we take 5 liters of warm water and add 1 drop of an iodine alcohol solution to it.

50 ml of such top dressing will be enough for one bush. To avoid burns to the trunk and geranium roots, water the soil along the walls of the pot.

Learn more about feeding with iodine here.
Pretty common but an effective method is feeding the plants of group B: B1, B6, B12. It is convenient to buy them in glass ampoules. A solution enriched with vitamins is prepared as follows: in 2 liters of warm water dissolve 1 ampoule of one of the vitamins, mix thoroughly and spill the earth around the flower.

After 2.5-3 weeks after the first feeding, a second one is made, but another vitamin is already used. Then, after the same period of time, the composition with the third type of vitamin is watered.

Magnesium sulfate also has a positive effect during flowering. Magnesium sulfate is used not in its pure form, but as a solution: 15 grams of the substance are dissolved per 5 liters of water.

At the same time, the water temperature should be at least 20 ° C, which allows the crystals to dissolve completely, and the fertilizer is better absorbed.

For magnificent growth on the street

Advice! If your beauty in the summer lives on a summer cottage or on the balcony of a city apartment, then you can use exactly the same fertilizers as for flowering garden plants.

Great is cow dung. With the right fertilizer of geranium with such a tool, not only flowering begins, but also the leaves become more juicy and vibrant. At the same time, you can still achieve quite large flowers, which is not always possible to do in room conditions.

Along with manure, all universal complex fertilizers can be used. They should be made every 2-3 weeks. But as soon as it gets colder on the street and the need comes to bring the pot with the plant into the room, the number of top dressings needs to be halved. This will help the plant adapt better.

To grow well

In the spring, or rather, from March, you should start feeding geranium with fertilizers that contain nitrogen - this activates the growth of leaves and roots.

Consequences of misapplication

But it should be borne in mind that it is too often impossible to water the geranium with a room solution of iodine and other fertilizers examined by us.

So you can partially damage the root system of the flower, because of which the geranium will begin to wither and often hurt. It is enough to feed every 3 weeks, starting from spring to autumn.

Useful video

Watch a video about feeding geranium iodine:

Conclusion

In a detailed examination of the issue of feeding geraniums, we were convinced in order to achieve magnificent flowering, it is not necessary to perform complex actions and use supernatural fertilizer compositions:

• Firstly, the main condition here will be that geranium grows initially in a soil that is sufficiently enriched with nutrients.
• SecondlyIn spring and summer, a complex of fertilizers enriched with minerals should be given.

Do not forget about regular watering with a weak solution of iodine. A correctly calculated volume of top dressing and the optimal regime for its application will provide abundant flowering of geranium for a sufficiently long period, which cannot but please its owner.