Growing Geraniums from Seed. How to do it?

Geranium seeds can be sown individually in small peat pots

Growing Geraniums from Seed.

You can grow geraniums from seed quite easily – provided you can give the seeds enough heat for germination. Most seed catalogues – or garden centre seed racks – will have a wide range of geranium seeds. Always go for F1 types if there is a choice.

To get them ready as plants for planting in early summer, you will need to sow the seeds in December January or February. Geranium seeds sown after this will be much later flowering.

There are not many seeds in a packet so follow the instructions very carefully.

The geranium seeds can be sown in pots of seed compost, or individually in one of the propagating pots which are available, You MUST keep a temperature of between 65deg – 70 deg F (18-21deg C). You may need to use an electric propagator to be able to do this, though I have great success with geranium seeds in my airing cupboard! If you try this, then you must look at the seeds daily and remove them out into a light warm place as soon as they have germinated.

Once they have a good pair of leaves, you can re-pot them into a 4in (100mm) pot with multi-purpose compost, and grow them on ready to plant out in the garden in late spring.

It is not a good idea to try and save you own seed from flowering plants you bought. They do not come true from seed, and are normally inferior plants to the original geraniums you bought.

You can short-cut the process above, by buying small seedling plants in early spring at good garden centres. Much better to let the specialist nursery have the heating cost of getting the geranium seeds to germinate, but not as much fun perhaps!