Every year I bring my geraniums indoors and put them on the kitchen windowsill, and every year they make nasty, long, thin shoots, even though the window is south-facing. What am I doing wrong?
A. Petersen, Bromsgrove
You are spoiling them, that’s what. They are too warm and probably steamy, so they continue to grow; and south-facing or not, there is never enough light in winter for sun-loving plants to make good, stocky growth.
But forced growth, even in windowsill sun, means that they need water, so you give them it, and then they grow faster and wispier. For them, winter in your kitchen is like an appalling summer outdoors. You would be far better keeping them somewhere cooler.
If your geraniums do shoot, the base of the older stems becomes woodier and less inclined to produce good shoots when you cut them back in spring. Ideally, you will be cutting back into greenish growth made late in the previous season.
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Take the tips out of those wispy shoots now and get them somewhere cooler.
Weeder’s digest
A ladder job to keep you off a snowy garden: cut back the gutter-bound profiles of self-clinging climbers such as ivy, Virginia creeper and climbing hydrangea. Aim for a jagged profile rather than a straight line — with high and low points so it looks as if the plant is spreading upwards of its own accord.
Death may be the great leveller, but so is snow. Multistemmed semi-woody plants such as Euphorbia characias and Helleborus argutifolius may have been flattened by it and it will take string and canes to make them look good again. The euphorbia may hold its own again after a while; the hellebore will need support right through now, but it’s worth it for a plant with such long-lasting flowers.
Potted hippeastrums (‘amaryllis’), below, need only a little water while they are in flower, just enough to keep the compost moist. Too much at this stage easily leads to root and bulb rots. Once the leaves develop, then they will use more water.
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Repair or put up new wires for climbers and espalier fruit trees on walls and fences. It seems like a lot of work but it is well worth using vine eyes and tension bolts instead of nails, so you can get the wire taut and sufficiently far off the wall. A gap of 1½in behind the wire makes tying in much easier. Tension bolts allow you to use thick wire and still get it tight, so that it won’t snap in three years’ time when your plants are established.