Iowa Bloom I can't be of much help because I rarely overwinter anything in the house (or even grow anything in the house to begin with - I always say my door is the threshold of doom for plants, lol) but your comment about the geraniums caught my eye.

I had read that once, that one could hang geraniums upside down in the basement, and thought it was so crazy it couldn't possibly work. So I tried it. And it worked! I dug up the geraniums, shook off the soil (can't remember if I washed the roots but I don't think I did) and hung them upside down from the rafters in my basement. Didn't do anything special regarding humidity or light (or lack thereof) etc, and the next spring planted them and they grew! I was very surprised! I did it for a few years till it just got to be too much time/trouble. I have never tried it with anything but geraniums so I don't know if it would work with anything else.

Good luck with your plants!

:)

Dee

Oh, and Dee; I tried washing/re-potting plants just like you have. It seems most of my bugs came from potting soil (doesn't matter what kind I use!). While it's a pain in the butt and gives me a sinus infection every single time, I now boil water and pour over the potting mix and let steep before using. Evidently, the bugs have eggs in the soil. Also; I periodically will water my containers with water that has had mosquito dunk soaked in it. Fungus gnats were the worst problems I had before doing all of this.

i treat all my potted plants outside.. before i bring them in... i never bare rooted them in late fall... if they needed repotting.. i did that in early or mid summer ...

as an example: https://bonide.com/product/systemic-houseplant-insect-control-granules/

also.. since you near barer root.. sterilize the media before using it...

https://tipnut.com/sterilize-soil/

you are using medium.. right??? ... soil isnt really for indoors...

if you already brought them in.. treat them anyway ... or drag them back outside.. when it warms for a few days...

ken

If you have a sunny windowsill, pelargoniums/zonal geraniums can be wintered over as a houseplant. And will typically bloom for you throughout the winter.

As to the bugs, I always water thoroughly with soapy water to kill any bugs in the soil/medium before bringing them inside. So far, I have had no problems. BTW, I use Dawn dishwashing soap if that matters. Probably doesn't though.

My experience with overwintering geraniums in pots was that they lived, but when I put them back outside in the spring, still in their pots, they took so long to flower again, that it wasn't worth it to me. I'd rather buy them when they're much farther along to have color sooner. But there could be other factors such as I had too much shade, or even with fertilizer, I should have refreshed the soil, so YMMV.

I've had trouble keeping alstroemeria dormant over winter, they always want to keep growing even if they're dry or kept cool.

The rest I have better luck taking cuttings and growing them under lights. For aphids I need some kind of spray, for spider mites a safer's soap kind of spray is enough, and for fungus gnats I have a sticky yellow square which they go on to and stick to and after a couple weeks they're gone for the winter.

If I'm feeling sentimental about the geraniums this week I'll put the mother plants into the garage, either in their pots or pull them out of the planters and pot them up in something smaller, and they'll sit in a dim, cool corner with only an occasional splash of water until March. They look terrible but if trimmed a bit and repotted in March, fertilized and put under lights they make a very nice plant by May. I don't bare root them, that seems awfully cruel and here they end up drying out too much.

I'm not bringing in any calibrachoa cuttings this fall, they bloomed very nicely but were aphid magnets and an all-winter battle. Some of the salvias were actually nicer under lights than in the garden lol.

I reuse soil and don't sterilize a thing, all my pests seem to come in with the plants, but that's just my experience.

Also some begonias like the cane begonias are really easy to overwinter dry in pots like the geraniums. They look terrible by late winter, but bounce back surprisingly fast and I love a five foot begonia full of blooms in August!

I read that fuchsia likes to go dormant in the winter, so you can let it get zapped by the first light frost outside, or you can just pull off all the leaves. I've done it both ways, and both worked fine. Then I store it in a chilly darkish place in my house that doesn't touch freezing but goes down to fridge temperatures for the coldest part of winter.

Some years it gets a little rosette of leaves while it's still in the chilly dark place, and that hasn't been a problem. In early spring when the sun streams in the south facing windows of my house, I clip off the stems and move the fuchsia pot to a spot to the side of a sunny window, where it won't get midday hot sun but will get bright indirect light and morning or afternoon bits of sun. It starts shooting new stems up and at last frost time I move it back outside.

This has worked for three winters for me now.

Last winter my indoor plants tended to have white flies that I just couldn't control, but the plants didn't seem too badly affected. When it was warm enough, I took them outside and sprayed them with the hose, which did set the flies back but they came back again slowly. All the plants survived and eg the fuchsia looked fine and was covered in blooms all summer. I'm considering what other measures I might take this winter to reduce them on my indoor plants.