assess health of this geranium

Question

Can you help me assess the health of this geranium please ?

I believe this is a a rather old plant, maybe 10 years old, it has been a year now i am taking care of it. A year back when i found him, it was a pair of branch and leaf, it was not in good shape. Because i knew it was old soil, i layered organic matter on top of the soil, and gave the plant some NPK. During late winter and early spring it was subject of slugs attacks, so i tried my best to manually get ride of them. In late spring and until mid summer it was flowering wonderfully and I was very happy to see it so big and so colorful. During that time i regularly checked for butterflies, i found a pair of cocoons and caterpillar. I got ride of them asap.

I also noticed that in some places the plant was turning black inside. But i am unclear what that means because i can still some growth. For the last three weeks it has entered a kind of vegetative phase, the holes in leaves are not increasing, not much, it is not flowering again, it is making new greens (slowly).

Unfortunately, while doing the cuttings to write this post, i found one caterpillar...... No idea where it come from. Seems dead... so bad....

thanks for your input!

color of the water after (good) watering

a cut with black stuff inside

the other side of the cut, nice green

the friend i found while doing pictures for this post. he is super lazy but still alive..... : (

the cuts i plan to to

so i should get ride of branches with black hole in it, such as

I hop it will also help this plant to have a better shape, because it has grew two big branches in opposite directions and this is not so nice.

Following is the plant 12 days after the cut, very nice greeny leaves are coming out, thanks again.

Answer 1

I can't tell if your Pelargonium is planted in a pot that has holes in the base - you may have it in a pot with holes sitting inside that china container, but if not, you need to move it to a pot with drainage holes. It looks as if it needs more root room anyway, so a slightly bigger pot than the one it's currently in is a good idea - use fresh potting soil to pack round the root ball in the new pot. Water thoroughly after repotting, but allow the pot to drain down freely, letting excess water flow out from the drainage holes. Your plant also needs cutting back, removing the bare woody stems to encourage new growth from the base, but unfortunately, it is a bit late in the growing season to do that now - it may not recover sufficiently before the weather turns colder. You should, though, remove spent flowers,not least to stop fallen petals collecting on the soil - they should just snap off at the base of the stem, where they join the rest of the plant, or if they are old, just come off easily when you pull on them.

I note there is some debris sitting on top of the soil, at the base of the stems - always remove any debris, including fallen leaves or anything else from the top of the soil. Pelargonium hates being too wet and require good airflow around them - they will quite easily succumb to fungal infections if their roots are too wet, or if there is debris sitting on the soil they're growing in, or are growing in a crowded space with insufficient sunlight and poor airflow. If the pot it's in doesn't have drainage holes, then it would have been difficult to get the watering right - too much and there's nowhere for excess water to go other than sitting round the roots. This could explain the black parts in the stems. In a pot with drainage holes, it's important to empty any outer pot or tray of excess water 30 minutes after watering, so the plant is not left sitting in water.

It looks as though something has been grazing on the leaves of the plant as well as nibbling holes in it - probably a caterpillar of some sort, though I am not sure what because these plants are not liked by lots of pests, but standing the pot on something to get it off the ground may help. In general, they are not damaged by slugs and snails, but can get thrips and aphids.

August/September is a good time to take cuttings, if you have somewhere to overwinter them, but you need the plant to have more strong growth in order to take cuttings. Repot now using fresh potting soil, and use a liquid fertilizer twice a week for 2 weeks (something like Miracle Gro will do, or Algoflash for geraniums), and make sure it receives as much sunlight as possible. Then wait and see if it manages to produce healthy new growth, and use that to make cuttings - instructions on how to do that here http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/basics/techniques/propagation_pelargoniums1.shtml#:~:text=When%20to%20take%20cuttings,-If%20you've&text=You%20can%20increase%20the%20volume,plants%20in%20a%20few%20weeks. If you're wondering why I am talking about Pelargonium and not geranium, note that your plant is actually Pelargonium - geranium is an almost worldwide common name for these plants. That can sometimes be confusing, because there is a separate genus of plants with the botanical name Geranium; these are herbaceous perennial plants which are unrelated to Pelargonium.