My poor cranesbill didn't make it too well through our heavy downpours last night. In fact, they go flat even with a moderate sprinkling of the hose. Is this normal with this plant? Is there anything I can do to keep it from flopping?
I trimmed it back but truth be told, Im a little worried about my pruning skills. I made sure to leave leaves on the stems I trimmed in hopes that it will bush out rather than grow taller.
Did I do alright and should I do anything more to keep these poor plants from bury themselves?
Thank you!!!
Karen (who is finding out gardening is a fine art!)
Flopped Over Cranesbill
Is it a wild geranium or a cultivar from a nursery? A lot of the cultivars, especially grey-leafed geraniums (Geranium cinereum) need to have good drainage and don't have especially high water needs.
A lot of geraniums stay flat for a while after a rain. I usually plant mine in some sun to minimize this problem. The ones that I grow in the shade are also a lot more likely to get leggy and sag over then the ones that get at least four hours of good sun. As far as the watering is concerned, a good start is just get a spout-watering can and water close to the gound. Most of them will also be forgiving if you pruned overenthusiastically at first. A couple of geraniums that I can think of don't need pruning at all. It depends on what you've got.
-Greg
I wish I had kept the tag! I bought two plants from Lowe's. They're a blue-purple flower and after checking out the Plant Files, I think it's the hardy geranium, possibly Johnson's Blue.
It's in a spot that gets partial sun and plenty of moisture due to my heavy hand of watering (which I'm going to chill out on!)
It's a beautiful plant so I hope it bounces back after my butchering. LOL!
I will be interested to follow along on this question.
In the past couple of years I have planted about 25 different kinds of hardy geraniums and I am still looking for the one that is so highly recommended as a garden plant! The highly touted "Rozanne" has been a dud in my garden.
Given my limited experience, I do think a lot has to do with positioning, your requirements/expectations for the plant in the garden, and which variety you are planting.
Some, I think, are by nature 'leggy' (perhaps Johnson's Blue?) and are meant to intertwine among daylilies and hostas and such. Others are little 'clumpy' things meant for edging and accents. My problem is I never have the right one in the right place!
Most do not like hot afternoon sun, which has been the downfall here. Also too much watering is a no-no, Also, not enough. And drainage, drainage, drainage is important.
Right now I have a very leggy 'Orion' (a relative of Johnson's blue, I think) along my walkway that I wish I had planted amongst the perennials to hide the legginess. And I too am wondering if I should whack it off and let it try to re-incarnate itself, or I should I endure it as is for a while,
If it is Johnson's Blue, Karen, that is not always going to be the neatest plant. It kind of creeps around a little like a ground cover sometimes. The nice thing about it, though, is that it is very tough, and if you're new to geraniums, you'll have a tough time killing it.
Tabasco, I agree that it can be tough to squeeze performance out of a lot of the geraniums. For now, I've started concentrating on G. cinereums and growing them in full sun like rock garden plants. I can consistently get these plants completely covered in blooms. They are definitely in the clumpy category, so I use them as edgers and specimens. I don't use them much as accents to perennials (aside from wild G. pratense that grow and do well whether I put them there or not) because I'm more of a specimen gardener than anything else, but I've heard a lot of people have the same problems that you are. In think it is in general an easy genus of plants, but it can be an extremely challenging genus to grow well!
Karen, if you decide you like geraniums, you'll eventually run into these, the G. cinereums that I have been writing about. These might be getting a bit away from what you'd like from a geranium, but they are blooming machines. Like Tabasco said, these especially need drainage, drainage, drainage, but they're worth it if you have places with kind of sandy but still quite fertile soil. The plant in the picture I am posting is now covered in those blooms. Right now, it looks more like this: http://users.belgacom.net/monic/flow42.jpg
I have G. sanguineum striatum 'Lancastriense' in the front of a border. It spread out to play with the brunnera planted next to it, the pink and the blue were so sweet together! Now the pink is playing off the grapey-purple of a clump of spiderwort. The border is in part-shade, planted under the hose, so I hardly ever need to specifically water it.
I also have G. pratense 'Midnight Reiter'. The color is so dark I had to pot it up in order to see it! I paired it w/tricolor sage, marjoram (leftover from last year), and pulmonaria 'Cevennensis'. It looks pretty good now, it was getting really leggy too, so I cut it back mostly all to the basal crown. I hope it fills in bushier.
I think this is one of those plants that are photographed close up, then when you buy them you're expecting something bigger. They're good fillers though.
Prairie Girl, The funny thing about 'Midnight Reiter' for me has been that it seems to love a lot of sun even though it looks like it would get burned to a crisp. Last year, I grew it in mostly shade and it was pouty and leggy with sparse blooms, and yes, I couldn't see it anyway! It looks like the shadow of a geranium in the shade. It came up looking really pathetic this spring. I just moved it two weeks into a part sun area that gets cooked with noontime sun. With a lot of water, the thing has taken off, doesn't look leggy at all, and is getting ready to bloom. Do you have yours in the sun? I have Cevennensis too, and I grow mine with quite a bit of sun too because it is extremely sun tolerant and I was wondering if you had the pulmonaria and geranium in the sun or part sun together.
I'm doing a lot of experimenting with shade plants and sun this year, hence my curiosity!
-Greg
I highly recommend Jolly Bee. I planted three of them last summer and they bloomed and bloomed and bloomed. I've never noticed them going flat. I have them in a location that gets a lot of sun most of the day.
I moved a Buxton's Variety from a sun location to a more shady location last fall. That one is now about 2 feet tall as opposed to about 15" in the sun. It wasn't doing poorly in the sun, but I had a vacant shade location that needed filling. I may move it back if it doesn't bloom well there.
I'm getting a new digi next week and as soon as I figure out how to use it, I'll post a picture of Jolly Bee. It started blooming earlier this week and I expect it to remain blooming until frost.
I also have an unknown pink that only blooms in spring. For years it barely survived as the dogs kept running it over. I finally put an 18" fence around it and it is now 3 feet tall. I never took the fence down and I think it helps to maintain its stature. I never see it flop.
Wow! Thank you for all the great discussion!
I really do enjoy geraniums and will try everything mentioned - I just have to wait as we're fixing this yard in order to put the house on the market before fall. I've already gone over budget on plants! I have to keep telling myself I can't take it with me. :(
My plants are already perking up - I don't think I did any damage trimming them back. They're in raised beds with very fertile soil and get good morning and early evening sun. They spend the afternoon shaded by a large oak.
I'm considering putting something in between the plants (which are roughly 3' from each other thanks to me naively believing my plant would go 4'x4' in one year. Sheesh!) but I can't think of a good filler that's full grown and won't cost me a bundle!
Thanks again for all the wonderful info! I'm really enjoying the reading. :)
Karen
Karen, I don't know if you've seen this, but DG has reinstated the Geranium forum. A lot of the discussion will be centered around Pelargoniums, but there are a lot of nice threads about hardy geraniums that might be of interest to you:
http://davesgarden.com/forums/f/geraniums/all/
-Greg
My Johnson's Blue tends to get leggy and ends up laying all over my other plants. I have a G. praetense that will get 3' tall, and almost that wide but stays upright throughout the season. I have a G. Karmina, and a Biokovo that are low and spready and totally covered with blooms, but my favorite right now is Elizabeth Ann. She has done really well here, I love the darker leaves (not dark like Midnight Reiter, more of a chocolate color) with the almost translucent pink flowers.
Thank you for the head's up, Greg!
Mine are starting to fill out again, thankfully. I also just transplanted my practically singed hydrangea from it's full sun location. My two cranesbill flank it and look less floppy when they rest on the beefy hydrangea leaves. I do enjoy the flowers but will do better to pair it with much stronger companion plants in the future.
A little aside, I found 3 bunnies in my mother's patch of Johnson's Blue today. They had flattened several of the plants where they were nesting. Apparently they do this every time it rains and the plants spring right back!
Karen
Interesting thread. I have quite a few geraniums and they are all different, some like little mounds of neat foliage and some tall, leggy and sprawling. As has already been said the trick is to plant them next to and through other plants that will support them. My Buxton's Variety does well in both sun and shade and I think it's one of the best of the lot. Oxonianum is a thug and you just couldn't get rid of it if you tried!
This is Oxonianum - very pretty but you can have too much of it!
Johnsons Blue among peony and hellebore foliage with alliums coming through.
This is a lovely one called Birch's double at the front of the border.
Geranium wlassovianum and pratense Victor Reiker.
Those are wonderful pictures! Thank you for posting them. I especially like the one with the peonies and alium. Now I'm armed with some wonderful ideas. Thanks!
You might want to try "planting" bare branches amongst the sprawling geraniums.