Azalea Problems and Overwintering Geraniums Indoors

Joanne says, “I brought my potted geranium in from outside to try to keep it all winter. It’s blooming but the leaves are turning yellow. What can I do? Also is it still safe to prune my knockout roses or azaleas? I’ve noticed that on my tall azalea tree, the branches have a white residue all over them. 

Okay let’s start with that one first, do not trim your azalea this time of year. The buds are already set for next spring. If you prune an azalea right now, you cut off all the flowers. And let’s face it, that’s why we plant that plant, for the flowers, right? So you want to prune an azalea as soon as it’s done blooming.

The white that may be on there could be from a couple different insects. There’s something that’s pretty common with azaleas called lace bug, and lace bug actually gets under the leaf and sucks the chlorophyll out, so it looks like somebody put powdered sugar all over the leaf. It’s a green and white dappled look.

If that’s going on, there are some things that we can put on it to kill those lace bugs if they’re still active. I would definitely treat it in the spring. Once the plant starts to grow again and you fertilize it with an all-season fertilizer, it helps it recover from any damage that an insect would have caused.

The roses, you can trim those back right now. I took my knockouts at home last week from about three feet down to about two feet. I may trim them back further in the spring, but that’s as far as I want to prune them back this time of year. Because if we have a bad winter and for some reason those stems were to die back a little bit further, that’s okay, I can trim them down. If I take them all the way down to just a nubbin and then it dies back, I’m pretty close to that crown, and I want to stay away from that crown with any risk of dieback.

I also pack leaves around the base of them for the winter time. It’s just a good insulator, helps trap moisture and keeps the temperature more constant around the base of the plant. 

Don’t forget to take your hose to any newly planted product this year, whether it be tree, a shrub, a perennial, water it one more time really good, really deep, because we don’t want that soil to dry out and then have the ground freeze. We want there to be moisture present when the ground freezes. It helps protect the plant through the winter.

The rains we’ve been getting aren’t really deep soakers lately, so we’re also still in a water deficit from the three months of zero rain.

With the geranium, yellowing leaves, right now that is gonna be kind of a normal thing. It can be a couple different factors and normally you can fertilize it, but I would wait right now. You do want to let it rest a little bit, so just give it a drink when it’s needed. You can just let it bloom and finish off and enjoy that bloom, then trim it back a little bit. 

Then you can do the all season fertilizer, but I usually wait until the days start getting longer, around mid-February. You do want your house plants to go through a dormancy. Yellowing leaves could just be from coming inside, also could be from that environmental change.

You want to dry out a little bit, just dry to the touch. Less watering is more in the winter months. You’re gonna be watering less because they are not taking up as much. I mean it would have to get really really neglected for it to die from drying out from lack of water this time of year. They’re pretty tough like that. 

You can over water a lot easier, especially this time of year so just make sure it’s completely dried out. When you water, and really with any of the houseplants and when it is dry and time to water just give it a really good drink. Make sure it’s coming out the bottom because that’s it’s going all the way down and getting all the roots, and then just let it go, repeat the cycle. Sometimes neglect is the best thing to do. Don’t let them worry you because they’re pretty good.

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