There’s a standard set of sensible reasons why people grow the charming dwarf geraniums because small windows will hold a larger collection of different varieties, or crowded greenhouses can make room for them between larger pots.
Because they make large people feel smaller, or small people feel larger. Or because they create more and brighter colors per square inch than almost any other plant.
But these reasons have the earmarks of rationalization. I suspect that it’s a matter of plant personality. If you like gay, lively, precocious children – you’ll love the dwarf geraniums. They’re so outlandishly impudent, that you’ll love them blindly, no matter what.
Consider the twins ‘Perky’ and ‘Sneezy,’ so alike I can’t tell them apart. They’re built low, like toddlers, seldom topping four inches. They keep a round mound of dark green leaves about the size of a quarter, but more abundant.
And like little boys with their fingers in the cookie jar, there’s a naughty twinkle in the white eyes of their outsized rose-red flowers that cluster ridiculously above the foliage. How could you resist them?
Or `Fairy Tales’ – she’s a princess. Her button-sized dark green leaves are appliqued with rows of lighter green. Her large, single, ruffled flowers are delicate lavender-pink shading to a white edge. Fairy-like, she never grows up, but keeps her three-inch charm in a kind of perpetual childhood.
If you want to put your green thumb to a test, try `Imp’ and ‘Ruffles.’ Both are as challenging as some of the brightest children. They’re so tiny and temperamental, that I’m often tempted to give them up.
But when ‘Imp’ shows off, as if to compensate for small stature, by holding up cluster after cluster of big single coral-colored flowers, I’m so glad I didn’t. ‘Ruffles’ is shyer, keeping her double-ruffled salmon flowers tight against her foliage. Both ‘Imp and ‘Ruffles’ have tiny dark leaves which hug the pot in a tight mound.
But enough of these rhapsodies! The dwarf geraniums are no less lovable if you know something of their botanical background and heritage. As far as I know, the only true dwarfs today are about 75 varieties of them–belong to the genus Pelargonium hortorum, which mainly includes the common garden geranium.
A semi-scientific classification is “zonal geraniums,” as distinguished from the Martha Washingtons, scented-leaved, ivy-leaved, and species, each a distinctive group of its own. Dwarfs in those other groups are to be looked forward to in the future.
To keep classifications neat and tidy so that one geranium grower will know what another is talking about, the dwarfs are divided into two types: miniatures and semi-dwarfs.
The International Geranium Society has not yet set a definite dividing line between the two; but for the present, and practical purposes, we might say the miniatures stay under three inches high, and the semi-dwarfs grow from three to six inches high. Beyond that, you have an honest-to-goodness garden geranium.
Your First Dwarf
Let’s begin at the beginning the moment when the first dwarf geranium arrives at your house. Perhaps you buy it locally, or the postman may bring it from one of the mail-order suppliers. It may resent being moved about, willy-nilly, cooped up in a dark, airless package.
If it sulks, if a few leaves are yellow and drop off, don’t pace the floor. If you care for it properly it will soon be cheerful and happy again. To know how to take care of any plant, you need to know where it came from because real success comes in duplicating, as nearly as possible, its natural habitat.
Geraniums come to us from South Africa, where there’s plenty of sunshine, little rain, and cool air particularly at night. There’s your geranium culture in a nutshell.
Dry House Air is Ideal
But to keep it as cool as possible, let the people find another room to lounge in while you open a door or window for five or ten minutes. All zonal geraniums grow best at a temperature of 50 to 60 degrees by night, ten degrees higher by day; but they are tough and usually adapt themselves to house temperatures.
The dwarfs are especially adaptable because they’re slow growers. When temperatures go higher, they won’t shoot up the way the larger plants do.
And again, I can’t resist comparing these charmers to children. They’re individuals, with individual likes and dislikes. What’s right for one is not necessarily good for another. Some are tricky and delicate, like `Imp,’ Ruffles,’ `Black Vesuvius.’ They’re more touchy about temperature and over-watering.
This brings us to the question of water. South Africa? Dry. And the dwarfs grow driest of all. Over-watering may quickly cause rot; if not, it may cause them to outgrow dwarf stature. So feel the soil in the pot of every clay. If it is dry and crumbly, water; if not, don’t.
Next to Watering Comes Fertilizing
This, too, is crucial with the dwarfs. If you stuff them with more food than they can properly digest, they won’t bloom. If you feed them too much they may grow so fast they’re not dwarfs anymore.
Yet you do want to feed enough so that they keep healthy and small, and bloom generously in the root-crowded pots they’re best grown in. One good fertilizing system is a weak – even half-strength -strength solution of a soluble, balanced commercial fertilizer every three weeks. For every third or fourth feeding, especially during summer, substitute a mild organic fertilizer solution.
Repotting
Now, does that newly arrived dwarf geranium need a new pot, with more space for those delicate roots to roam around in? Chances are no if you want your dwarf to keep small. These low, slow growers don’t develop so many roots. The tiniest miniatures will often stay in the same pots for years. And your new plant is probably a youngster, anyway. Unless the root ball is so hard, when you tap the plant gently out of the pot, that there’s practically no soil at all, don’t repot. And if you do, make sure the new pot is only one size larger.
Soil Mixture
If a new pot is called for, what kind of soil should you provide? The answer is much simpler than for many more finicky house plants. Any good garden soil will grow a good plant.
If you want to go to the limit and make a special mix, try three parts garden loam, one part rotted manure or peat moss, one-half part sharp sand or substitute, and a small amount of bone meal, superphosphate, or balanced commercial fertilizer.
And a very small amount that is! If your soil happens to be extremely acidic, some lime will bring the mix back to the near-neutral or just slightly acid point which geraniums like best.
Now, suppose you have a few – or many – dwarf geraniums growing in your window or greenhouse. Like growing children, they may have problems from time to time. What plants don’t? This simplified chart may help you find both cause and cure.
Occasionally, geraniums will develop adventitious growth on the lower stems. Dwarfs are most susceptible to this. To prevent rot, this growth should be carefully trimmed off, and the cut treated with an antiseptic, like fermate.
Except for the larger of the semi-dwarfs, which occasionally develop a tendency to get rangy, these geraniums grow naturally compact and bushy and don’t need to be pinched back. But it’s more than a matter of appearance to remove faded flowers and leaves promptly; it’s a matter of health and promoting blooms.
Geranium Cuttings
So now, your dwarf geraniums are growing nicely; you have the problems and pests under control, and your next-door neighbor is green with envy. She’s a good gal, and you’d like to share with her. It’s time to take cuttings. And it’s fun.
Take some of the semi-hardened wood, with at least one node; and let your cutting rest for a few hours until the cut dries off and hardens slightly. Then insert it in moist sand, or any rooting medium you like.
You’ll admire the speed with which these little fellows root; and you’ll appreciate the fact that they should be potted immediately when the roots first show. You’re taking a chance with rot if you let the roots grow out to form a full ball.
That’s why many growers root cuttings directly in the soil, in the pots in which they are to grow. Keep the cuttings in semi-shade for the first week, then finish off the process with semi- to full sun. Allow the sand to dry out slightly between waterings. They root in two to four weeks. ‘Pigmy’ roots in seven days!
Interior Idea Decorations
And there’s your full cultural cycle – temperature, light, water, soil, fertilizer – to produce healthy growing plants from which you can take cuttings and start all over again. Here are a few ideas on using dwarf geraniums for interior decorations:
Tuck pots between knick knacks or figurines, on glass shelves, in a sunny window – a combination of collections. Grow child-scale plants in clever containers in the nursery or children’s playroom.
Provide conversation and chuckles for parties by placing a single, gnome-like plant with a braggadocio blossom in the center of the cocktail table. Frame the view from the picture window with dwarfs in brackets up and down the sides. Greet the guest or invalid with a quaint dwarf geranium in a gay glazed pot on the breakfast tray.
If you can bear it, use the blossoms for dainty compositions in thimble-sized vases. Or group the plants on the table in the breakfast nook. Break the straight line of the window sill or shelf by setting some plants on glass bricks or other pedestals of varying heights.
The dwarfs are good edgers for window boxes. If the box is in a fairly -sheltered spot, use miniatures; if not, the semi-dwarfs are sturdier. The same for edging garden beds.
Few Desirable Dwarfs
And now, to whet your appetite, a few of the new and most desirable dwarfs: SPRITE – delicate, miniature; tiny mosaic green and white leaves with pink tint: small single flowers of an unusual salmon shade.
TINY TIM – smallest of them all. Maximum height, one inch. Green crinkled leaves no larger than the eraser on a pencil, and equally tiny single red blooms.
GOBLIN – bushy grower with excellent coloring and well-formed double crimson flowers, the sturdy habit of growth. Semi-dwarf – to eight inches.
FLEURETTE – lush olive-green foliage, faintly zoned; double hoop-skirt flowers of salmon pink.
TRINKET – orange-salmon double flowers, foliage dark green.
SALMON COMET – real miniature with butterfly foliage and lots of frilly long-petaled single salmon blooms.
ROSY DAWN – dark foliage with double salmon-orange blooms of an unusual color.
SMALL FORTUNE – double pink blooms shading to white center. Dark green foliage.
TWINKLE – sparkling double coral-rose flowers make it stand out from others.
But this could go on forever! You can have shaggy-looking flowers, like `Mischief’ and `Red Spider’; or large-petaled singles, like ‘Scarlet O’Hara’ and ‘Doc.’ Or you can choose the robust single ‘Snow White’; or `Polaris,’ a white with pink tint; or perhaps you’d like ‘Epsilon’ – as I do – a beautiful large phlox-eye type, semi-dwarf with light green leaves.
If you prefer a single with more pink, try a semi-dwarf apple-blossom type `Dopey.’ For a very light double pink, choose `Kiffa’ or `Venus.’ Capella and Emma Hossler are deep pink and wonderful bloomers.
Good double reds that stay small are `Merope, “Meteor, “Jupiter,’ and `Saturn.’ For a lovely salmon rose, it’s a toss-up between ‘Altair’ and `Sheraton.’ Then there is ‘Minx,’ a double purple-crimsonóan uncommon color for geraniums.
You get dwarfs with leaves variegated green and white, like the old favorite ‘Madame Salleron,’ or the newer variegated ‘Kleiner Liebling’; or bronze and gold-leaf types such as `Alpha,’ a semi-dwarf, and ‘Nugget’ – which I’ve found most difficult to grow. ‘Fairyland,’ a beautiful tricolor, is another prima donna for me.
Or perhaps you’re nostalgic about the older varieties. ‘Pixie,’ a large single salmon, has been almost super-ceded by `Pride,’ Brooks Barnes,’ and ‘Peaceóstronger growers, but the same salmon blooms with dark foliage. `Pigmy’ has no rival; he’s always gay with semi-double red blooms.
But he doesn’t care about traveling at all and it is difficult to ship. If you long for a stronger-growing type of the old favorite ‘Black Vesuvius,’ try ‘Red Brooks Barnes.’ The foliage is equally dark, the blooms equally brilliant orange-scarlet.
Who knows when to stop? I don’t. I adore these mischievous dwarfs!
44659 by Mary Ellen Ross