Plant in soil now, water, put in a sunny window and wait. My house is too dry, so I have better luck with overwintering in pots in a sunny window. Some folks take cuttings.

Thanks kindly for the reply. I don't think I properly stored them over the winter.

I simply peeled the dead leaves, wrapped in paper bag hanging upside down in a cool dry area. I may have stripped or peeled too much of the main root. I'll try again this late summer or early fall. I really don't have an area of which I can expose them to rays in early spring. Any further advice would be greatly appreciated.

No windows at all with a windowsill? That really has been most successful for me.

define the area you stored them in ... many houses do NOT have an old fashioned root celler ... which stays cold enough for this ... and it is the reason i cant hold potatoes long term .... my forced air furnace just keeps the house too warm and dry .. for root storage ...

i tried a couple times in suburbia ... and it never worked ...

yet my uncle had what is called a MI basement at his cottage ... and frankly.. he couldnt kill them ... and he just threw the pot and all in there.. as i recall ....

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061026220404AA9hicW

it really doesnt matter if you have a spot for them indoors in spring to force them early ... if you cant get them thru winter ... you wouldnt really need to sprout them early .. if they remain viable ... and in proper cold/cool storage ... you would just take them out doors.. when teh weather was ready ...

ken

btw: i always wanted a root cellar ... where i could store all my fall root crops .... and fruit deep into winter ... this is where the cabbages.. potato.. pumpkin .... apples.. pears ... etc... could be stored.. without a refrigerator ... probably your cheeses also.. as cheese is just a form of long term milk storage ... when it all boils down ...

I trim mine down to a few leaves, plant them in clean soil in a pot, put them on a plant stand in a cool room, near a window, and water them once a month from October thru March. Then pinch back any gangly growth, fertilize, and by May they are good to put outside. I’m in Massachusetts. Sometimes they even bloom in the winter.

Thanks ALL for your well taken advice!!

So, let me ask what the benefit of over wintering geraniums (Pelargoniums) is. Do they increase in size the next summer? Just a way to save money because those ridiculous annuals really add up?

For me it’s a way to keep plants that I may not be able to find in succeeding seasons. For instance I had two geraniums/Pelargoniums die this winter due to my own neglect, and the red zonal I found a replacement for, but the variegated lemon geranium had to be replaced with a nonvariegated, not what I prefer. I also love that they start blooming indoors in February.

I used to overwinter geraniums in my cellar in pots. (Some other people store them as bare root.) Our cellar is heated but is much cooler than the rest of the house. The geraniums typically did well, even continuing to bloom, for several months, but looked pretty sad by the time I put them back outside in Spring. They did recover as time went on, but tended to be stem-y and not as nice-looking as the first year.

My reason for over-wintering them was that it just seemed wrong to throw out plants which were flowering gloriously at the end of the season, and also I guess to save a few bucks by not having to buy new plants the following year.

Several years ago I ceased buying flowering plants out of fear of the pesticides that may have been used on them by the growers. I started to raise my own geraniums from seed at that point, and that seemed to be a better method.

That was when I stopped trying to overwinter them in the basement. However this year geraniums were among the many seed germination failures I had. (I'm guessing it was just too cold. I've heard that geranium seeds require warmth to germinate, not necessarily sunlight, but warm temperatures.) I planted more seeds directly in the outdoor planters and they are sprouting, but time will tell if they ever have time in our short growing season to bloom. I hedged my bets by planting nasturtiums in with them.