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Via EnjoyGardening)
Posted by admin to Uncategorized on 2009-07-03, 07:22:08
first published June 25, 2009
Hanging baskets are capable of causing both great joy and sorrow to gardeners. It seems the plants either cascade in a profusion of flowers and foliage or retrograde into a death spiral before morphing into brown sticks. The good news, however, is that with a little forethought, one doesn’t have to settle for dried flower arrangements.
The first step, which may be a moot point if you’ve already filled your containers, is to start with only the highest quality plants. Lanky, stretched, weak plants will struggle and rarely, if ever, put on an outstanding show before season’s end. So if you’re still shopping, look for well-branched plants—they’ll develop the best mounding or trailing habits. Remember, it’s garbage in, garbage out. Start with the best, and by midsummer the volume of plants in your basket will easily be two or three times the volume of the pot. But that’s not where it ends.
To achieve that plant volume above the soil surface, there has to be lots of volume below the surface. For example, 8-inch diameter baskets often languish during the summer because they simply don’t have enough space for vigorous root growth. Eight-inch diameter baskets, surprisingly, have only half the soil volume of 12-inch diameter baskets. And since root growth is intricately tied to leaf and flower growth, my advice is to always go with the larger size.
Just as there is no substitute for root volume, so too is there no substitute for adequate watering. Whenever I walk down the aisles of the greenhouses, I can’t help but reach up and smack the bottoms of the baskets with my knuckles. If the baskets barely move, I know they contain plenty of water. But if a tap manages to launch one off its hanger, I know that even with a good drink of water it may not survive. Remember, hanging baskets, like pets, need access to water seven days a week. In other words, if you’re heading out to the lake on a hot weekend, make sure there’s someone stopping by to give your plants a good soaking.
So now you have great quality plants, in large baskets, and plenty of water to keep them healthy. What more could a hanging basket want? Fertilizer. And keep it coming. Consistent fertilizer applications are more important for hanging baskets than for any other category of plants in the garden. The reason is simple. It doesn’t take long for roots to explore every nook and cranny in a basket and, in the process, suck up all the nutrients along the way. The plan for feeding baskets is simple. Add 1 gram of 20-20-20 to 1 liter of water, and apply it each time you water. Next on the list, maintenance.
Giving your plants a regular haircut will keep them well branched and dense. Some plants, such as geraniums, will also need to be deadheaded once a week, which involves nothing more than a quick clip of the spent flowers. Other plants, such as ‘Surprise’ and ‘Shock Wave’ petunias, are self-cleaning, which means their spent flowers don’t mess up the foliage and, therefore, don’t need to be removed. Either way, a little trim always keeps baskets looking their best.
Oh, and one last tip. Clip one end of a carabineer to the hook on your hanging basket and the other end to the hook on your house. This handy little gadget will allow you to turn your basket for more even exposure to the sun, and all without having to unhook it from the hanger.
By adhering to the basics of growing a great hanging basket, success can easily be yours. True, sticking to a watering schedule takes a little effort, but so does convincing your friends that your dried up basket is just a fine example of xeriscaping.
Enjoy gardening!
