I will probably buy mine, but they will live in the cold frame until it's a bit warmer.

They are a great deal but too cold to plant out yet. Keep in a protected location until nighttime temperatures are consistently above 45F. Zonal geraniums will tell you it's too cold for them by the reddening of their foliage.

Would this reddening when attempting early planting be referred to as Zonal denial?

The deer love the flowers. My neighbor doesn't line her driveway with them anymore, but has a few up by the house.
Mike

How funny that those stinky things would appeal to deer.

Thanks for posting the FYI.

Funny story about deer and geraniums. We have a house at the coast too. I planted my Freddy 99 cent specials there in a hot pink. The back yard is completely enclosed by a 4 foot picket fence.

After the 4th of July I'm done there and none of the geraniums in the back yard are blooming. They have all been neatly cut off. I wondered if my neighbor had cut some for a centerpiece thinking I wouldn't be down.

In the front yard my window boxes are full of pink blossoms but the pots on either side of the steps are similarly devoid of bloom. The mystery was solved a couple of evenings later when we noticed a deer grazing in the neighbors yard. It had apparently leaped the fence, ignored roses, clematis, daisies, dianthus etc and dined on the hot pink geraniums. I guess it was too much work to climb into the beds in the front of the house to get to the window boxes.

I think the available grazing must have improved through the rest of the summer because I never found a trimmed geranium in the back again. The deer wandered our part of town until fall.

The best part is that the two pots in front never had a blossom that wasn't beheaded while the RED geraniums in pots across the street were left alone all summer long.

Not only do they love geraniums, the apparently have a color preference!

Geraniums are medicinal. The deer know more than we do

Often plants smell etc. so as to repel or limit browsing and grazing. It's a battle that has gone on forever, defensive chemicals in plants may be why deer nibble here and there and then move on. It would certainly be why they favor the most tender new growth - it does not have the full payload built up yet.