Overwintering Annuals

These days, my house is more crowded than ever, as tis the season I bring my garden indoors... or at least as much of it as my husband will tolerate. (He's used to sharing space with a flotilla of plants and pets, but won't stand for having to move plants before he can get dressed in the morning.)

For most gardeners, the onset of winter is depressing enough without having to watch the annuals they've carefully tended for months turn into blackened soggy lumps. If you have the space, some of them can be overwintered indoors.

For instance, you may want to overwinter fuschias. While they're not terribly expensive where I live, it's frustrating not to be able to find the varieties that enchanted me last summer in the garden centres in the spring. Overwintering eliminates the search entirely.

If the fuschias you want to overwinter are potted already, all you need, according to Bill Tyler at http://www.harbornet.com/folks/tyler/upd... is a cardboard box , a sheet of foil and a section of newsprint. After the first frost, put the fuchsia pot in the box on the foil and put the box in the garage or a spare bedroom. The foil is to keep the moisture in the box and help keep out any below freezing weather. Be sure and give the plants a cup of water every week or so (just enough moisture to keep the roots from drying out over the winter).

Don't worry about the leaves of the plant; Bill advises letting them fall off the branches naturally and then trimming the branches back to a nice round shape; this will give you a good starting point for shaping the plant in spring.

If you have a crawl space under your house that you'll be able to get to during the winter, overwintering fuschias is even easier. Simply place the plants on their sides on a piece of plywood, and put the whole thing under the house after the first frost. Pull out the board periodically and check the plants for moisture; it's important to never let the soil become too dry, so the roots survive the winter.

Geraniums are another tender annual that are easy to overwinter; they can be potted up, brought in, and basically treated as houseplants. Every fall I examine the geraniums in my yard and pick out an assortment of favourite colours and forms to pot and bring inside. I'm fortunate enough to have a spare room that I can keep cooler than the rest of the house; geraniums need to be kept warm enough to keep from freezing but don't care for house temperatures as warm as I like (about 70 degrees F.). But as they need only limited sun and weekly watering, a cool basement or garaage will work for winter storage. Prune back any leggy growth and fertilize about once a month with an all-purpose liquid fertilizer low in nitrogen. In January or February , the geraniums should be repotted in fresh soil, and moved into a warmer room with more light; this is when it's time to begin watering and fertilizing regularly, getting the plants ready to go back outside.

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