HANGING BASKETS AND WINDOW BOXES- BITS AND BOBS 2016

Well, that time of year is upon us once more (although the weather is doing its best to persuade us otherwise), and very soon our minds will be turning to planning our planting schemes for 2016 - so, I thought it would be useful for us to have a thread where we could exchange plans and tips, ask advice or opinions, and then hopefully later in the year we can generally show off our results.

I will sticky this thread for now, and hopefully it will be of benefit.

 

A great idea for a thread.

I'm not sure that I can give much advice on this, as we don't really plan things, apart from "try it and it will probably work".

We use fresh multi-purpose compost. Put a lot of slow release fertiliser in it, water frequently and, when the plants have really got going, we add tomato feed every time we feed our tomatoes.

Some of the plants we use are raised from seed or are from cuttings but most come from one of the many superb nurseries near us. We're fortunate in having so many private nurseries around (about 20 in a two mile stretch of one road). Some of them are specialists and some only deal with the trade

We get our main hanging baskets brought on in someone's heated greenhouse as we need them looking good for when we open the garden at the end of May. We get them back mid-May to harden them off (kept under the covered pergola or in the car port - or in the greenhouse if frost is promised).

A good tip for when you are still protecting your baskets - usually in the greenhouse. You don't really want to hang them in the greenhouse (even if it's capable of taking them hung up) as they are difficult to water and look after.

We stand ours on an upturned container/pot or sit it in the top of a large container, so that the trailing parts aren't on the ground. We actually use big square cut flower containers that were surplus to requirements at Sainsbury's.

Then you get the problem of stopping the plants growing over the hanging chain as it's resting in the top of the basket. So, when you plant up the basket stick a cut down cane into the middle. Then put the hook of the chain into the top of the cane. It also makes it much easier to lift and move the basket.

This was in mid-May in the pergola (sorry, didn't think of showing the top of the cane)


Another good tip is when you get the problem of when do you take out your winter plants from the baskets and plant up for the summer. The winter ones always seem to be doing really well when you need the baskets. (not a problem if you have plenty of spare baskets.)

We usually have winter pansies hanging up. As we have plenty of spare baskets for the summer it's not a problem for us as we just swap them over in May but you can always plant them into other pots if you need the baskets.

We take the easy path for our big pots and never fill them with soil before planting. We just stand hanging baskets in the top of them. This saves a lot of soil, the problem of dirty soil running out of the bottom of the pot when watering and makes it easy to move them.

These are two of our winter pansy hanging baskets that have been removed from hanging in May and dropped into the top of some big pots.





We were lucky this year as they kept going for a long time.

This was in July (a couple of other plants had been added).





Then there are plantings to take you through to late summer (when the baskets are fading a bit).

These were planted late May/early June (photo mid-June)



Late September

 

I am toying with the idea of fitting basket chains to large-ish pots this year, and hanging those from my basket hooks - my theory being that there will be more space/compost and therefore nutrients and water?

 

If your supports are far enough from the wall, why not just get bigger baskets?

Re watering:- if the basket is bigger there would be room for you to insert a plastic (vending machine) cup in the compost - leave half an inch protruding above the surface and make a hole in the bottom. When watering, just fill the cup. The water doesn't run off the surface taking some soil with it .

It's also easy to fill the cup by just using a milk bottle - needed a bit more frequently but so easy and the water uptake is steady. Adding feed later on in the season (after the granular seed in the compost has been used) should be done straight onto the surface of the soil.

Good watering and feeding can produced this by the 5th of July - but we get a couple of weeks head start.

 

I am perusing seeds at the moment, and am really unsure what to go for - petunias seem to be the obvious choice, mostly because they generally perform well; however, they do want a lot of maintenance (dead heading) and as summer progresses, I always seem to have flat looking baskets where the flowers are over the sides but not much on top - how best to combat this problem?

Is it simply that petunias alone are not the answer, and I need something else in the baskets?

 

Petunias do tend to have a pendulous habit.

Fuschias and geraniums will give you height and are easy to look after.

We never grow our petunias from seed as we can buy the plants quite cheaply in local nurseries (about 80p a plant but we also get a discount because of the charity). As they have the right conditions for bringing them on early and getting them to bloom by the time they are safe to hang out.

 

Blimey 80p per plant makes my seeds look like an absolute bargain! 1500 pelleted seeds for just under £20... even allowing for deaths and non-starts, I reckon I am a good few hundred quid at least better off.

I might put fuchsias and geraniums in the middle of the baskets with petunias and dichondra around the sides?

 

@shiney - what is the purple flower at the bottom left of your last picture?