Hi, thank you for all the responses to my previous question about keeping geraniums through Minnesota winter. I was so impressed with the helpfulness of the members and wealth of knowledge in this forum! For some reason I have not been receiving email notification of new messages and sorry that I did not notice additional postings until now.

I realized that this fall is becoming very busy for us, so I am thinking I'll probably go with the simple, "uproot them, put them in paper bags, and keep them in the basement" method. Bringing them in in pots as indoor plants over winter is also convenient, but does not work for us because we have a small child who would want to touch and rip them and dig through the pots, and we don't have a room that would get enough sun in the basement.

Now it is getting colder I am ready to uproot the geraniums (have actually started doing some) and have additional questions that I am hoping you could help me with.

1) My geraniums are still blooming, even has some flower buds. Is it the right time to uproot them?

2) How much dirt can the roots have when I put them in paper bags? When I dig them up it has a lot of dirt - I've been hitting it with the hand spade (lightly) to get excess dirt off, but I'm afraid it is going to damage the roots. I can loosen the roots with hand to get most of the dirt off, but is it necessary?

3) I see a lot of white fuzz, mostly ball shaped, in the roots. I want to make sure these are not bug eggs or something that I wouldn't want to bring inside before I do. I mostly used organic soil bought in a bag from a store for the pots. I didn't notice these fuzz balls when I planted them. Any idea what these are?

Thank you so much for your guidance!