I'll answer backwards.

Picking off dried and dead leaves is always a good thing. the scab like thing is a bit of disease. Nothing too serious usually. (I forgot the name.)

I usually take off the stalk that the bloom is on, just for a tidier look on these plants. It breaks off cleanly at the stem of the plant.

Deadheading is done to prevent the sseds from forming. When the seeds form, hormones are released to signal the plant to stop blooming and ripen the seed. So, if you take of the flowers before that hormone is released, the plant flowers again. It's OK if you didn't get the plant dead-headed at the 'proper' time. It will still bloom again. The weather is probably as much the cause of no blooms, as it still is a bit early in the spring, even though you are a little warmer. I can't even have mine outside yet. Cold weather, as we seem to have lapsed back into for a while, discourages blooming. They'll bloom again when it is warmer.

Fuinally, I believe the plant you are talking about is the pelargonium, not a true geranium. I'm not scolding, just trying to help clear things up. The common bedding plant sold as a geranium is actually a pelargonium. The botonists mis-named it way back when plant nomenclature was first being developed. The name had stuck, and it has taken nearly 100 years to get even some of us folks to switch :-) The FAQs on this forum has an explanation of this, if I remember correctly. Some folks here gave pelargoniums the nickname 'pellies' which I particularly like. No matter what they are called, I love them! True geraniums are also a beautiful plant, and the two are related.

Good questions. Enjoy your plants. I have a sort-of sunroom with quite a few, all of one variety though. Just waiting on warmer weather. :-)

cantstopgardening: thank you so much for the information! i will wait for warmer weather and see how they do then...
i was confused about where to cut off the flowers. I took it off by the stem cleanly like you did and im glad you cleared that up! i wasnt sure if i was supposed to clean above the part where it is attached to the rest of the plant. thanks!