Gardening.com

Among the post popular flowering plants, geraniums can be grown indoors in pots or outside in hanging baskets, planters, window boxes and the ground itself. Common geraniums are actually correctly called pelargonia; true geraniums include wildflowers and herbaceous perennials such as pineapple geranium or lemon geranium that can be used in cooking.

The most common varieties of geranium are:

Garden Geraniums (Pelargonium x hortorum): Compact plants used in flowerbeds, these often have fancy leaves marked by dark pigments in distinctive patterns. They can also have tri-colored leaves or leaves with silver or white markings. Blossoms are clustered into heads and may be either single or double, ranging in color from white through pale pink to darkest red.

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Garden Tip…

Those who raise seed for the market take great pains to produce none but good, sound seeds, and in nine cases out of ten, where seeds fail to germinate and grow, the fault is with those who sow them, and not on account of poor quality of seed. This we know from experience.
~ James Sheehan

Martha Washington (Pelargonium x domesticum): This geranium variety is frequently as a flowering potted plant during winter months. This variety does not tolerate heat and does not grow as easily outside as does the common geranium.

Ivy-Leaved Geraniums (Pelargonium peltatum): These have smooth, leathery leaves and flowers with narrower petals and less dense flower heads and tend to grow in a vine-like mode. Looks wonderful in hanging baskets, where it may spill over the container by three feet.

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Garden Tip…

Propagating Plants: Take a pan, or dish, at least three inches deep—the circumference of which may be as large as you wish, fill to within one half inch of the top with sand. The cuttings are to be inserted in the sand, which is made very wet, of the consistency of mud. The pan should then be placed on the window case, where it will receive the full light of the sun, which will not injure the cuttings in the least, providing the sand is kept constantly wet, being careful to never allow it to become dry for a moment, otherwise the plants will be lost.

Is there no drainage from the pan necessary? none, the atmosphere will evaporate the water fast enough to prevent any stagnation during the brief time required for the cuttings to take root.

Success in propagating in this way, depends altogether upon keeping the sand wet like mud until the cuttings in it are “struck” or rooted, and this may be easily determined—with the hand gently try to lift the cutting, you will know if it is rooted by the hold maintained on the sand, if not, it will come out. A little experience in feeling with the hand in this way, will enable you to readily determine whether the cutting is rooted or not.
~ James Sheehan
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Scented-Leaved Geraniums (Pelargonium graveolens): These include rose-scented, lemon-scented, nutmeg-scented, apple-scented and peppermint-scented plants. Wonderfully fragrant, the scented geraniums have numerous foliage types and make excellent houseplants as well as well as lovely additions to an herbaceous border.

Mosquito Geraniums ? A scented pelargonium, this plant has genetic material coded to produce a citronella smell, known to repel mosquitoes. Mosquito-repelling advertising claims for this plant have not been tested, but it does grow well in most gardens.

Plant geraniums outside after all danger of frost has passed, preferably in location where they will receive at least six-to-eight hours of sun. While they will grow in shadier areas, geraniums don?t flower well in shade and are more susceptible to disease there than in sun. They like good air circulation but need to be protected from winds strong enough to break their branches.

When grown in very wet and humid conditions or over watered, geraniums can develop a fungus called Botrytis cinerea, which appears as a fuzzy gray growth on leaves and new flower buds. Without proper treatment, these lesions will grow until they rot entire stems of the plants, turning flowers brown and causing them to drop prematurely.