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Hanging Baskets

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Hanging Baskets

Postby Puss-in-boots » Sun May 13, 2012 10:52 am

I am going to be putting together some hanging baskets soon and wondered if you buy yours all ready to go or do you do yours yourself? I ask as i have never done them before so if you do put yours together yourself do you start from the outside in or the othe other way around. I would be very gratefull for any hints/tips that any of you may have and also the best time to do them.

TIA Puss.x

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby hypercharleyfarley » Sun May 13, 2012 6:05 pm

Hello - sorry nobody's replied so far - and it's ages since I had hanging baskets here (I go away quite a bit in the summer & don't want the faff of fixing an automatic watering system) but maybe this will help a bit.

Since the main problem seems to be a profusion of plants and relatively little compost for nutrients and water retention, people sometimes add water-retaining gel. It's relatively easy to add nutrients when watering - I used to use Phostrogen. You can get a solid-sort of "basket" - a bit like a plastic bowl with a drip tray attached - and this seems to minimise water loss, but I don't think they look as nice as the conventional ones because some plastic usually shows.

You can line the conventional wire baskets with moss, but it's easier to use one of the garden membranes - or even an old woollen sweater cut up into suitable shapes/pieces. Imagine a sort of sun-shaped piece with the "rays" cut so's to give an overlap when you put it in the basket. (Take a look at what's on offer in your local garden centre & I bet you could copy some of the stuff.) You can then poke/wiggle holes through the gaps to push the plants through (roots first, from the outside!) Best to start at the bottom with a layer of compost and then put the plants in (with their roots resting on top of that first layer of compost) round the edges nearest the bottom - carry on with layers of compost/plants until you get to the top but leave the centre with a hollow to take a couple of larger plants & fill round them with more compost. I think it looks best to have the trailing plants coming down over the top rather than from half-way down the sides. I used to use trailing nepeta for this, but there are other traily things you could choose.

I think the baskets I liked best were the ones I did which contained only one variety of plant - petunias perhaps, or even busy lizzies - which make the whole thing look a bit like a coloured ball - but you can get trailing petunias anyway. As far as starting them off is concerned, now would be a good time, but you might need to hang the baskets indoors (shed/garage/greenhouse?) for a week to ten days until the plants get settled in a bit. One day I might get the bug again and grow some Tumbling Tomatoes or strawberries instead of flowers ...................you never know...!

Hope I've explained properly what I used to do, but I guess you get the drift!

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Global_Worming » Mon May 14, 2012 10:13 am

All good advice from HCF according to my wife who read the post. :thumbsup

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Puss-in-boots » Mon May 14, 2012 2:26 pm

HCF thankyou sooo much for that detailed explanation, you did explainproperly and i think i will go with your advice on putting the trailers on the top/sides and not through the bottom. (If that makes sense).

I will let you know how i get on with then when they are ready. :thumbsup

Thanks too GW.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby LouP » Mon May 14, 2012 6:59 pm

I can heartily recommend Trailing tomatoes and basil in hanging baskets. Smell is absolutely fab as you brush past on a summers day (if we actually get any sun this year.) ;)
My only advice would be if you use the "pretty" baskets then you will need to water them very regularly. I use the solid plastic ones with a water reservoir as I am supremely lazy / forgetful.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Joanbunting » Mon May 14, 2012 9:15 pm

Hi

Feels a bit strange to be out of my comfort zone. I am no great gardener but I do struggle to have a pretty courtyard garden - facing due south in Provence, not easy in summer.

I usually have two hanging baskets and three or four wall containers, as well as the "hanging" troughs from the balcony above. I need to keep enough space for quite a large table at ground level and a little table for m and i on the balcony

In one basket I use just foliage - I like a white/grey/green scheme in summer because when we sit outside it glows in the dark. In the other I put training geraniums,and other such things for which i know not the names or could spell them if i did :D :D . i used to use "pretty baskets - no good here so now I use green plastic with reservoirs and I use water gel - otherwise I would be watering three times a day.

This year I have put fuschias in the wall containers because they are under the shade of the vine/wisteria and I realise that only shade plats will do. Under them are my herb pots. Up above is the balcony with white Roi de Balcon geraniums in those suspended troughs best known in France and white surfinas.

Sorry about the spellingand lack of knowledge - but our little space, on two levels with as much hanging stuff as possible is rather precious.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby hypercharleyfarley » Mon May 14, 2012 10:47 pm

Hello again! glad to know you found my earlier post helpful. As I said (because I'm not here all the time in the summer months) hanging baskets etc are a no-go item for me on account of their needing frequent watering. So - and this is for Joan B - you might find it worthwhile investigating the automatic watering systems which are available in the UK. I don't know if you can get them in France, but I expect you can.

What does work for me, however, is to have large pots of pelargoniums and carex (a sort of grass) and both seem to survive reasonably well without frequent/regular watering. The pots are quite large, so don't dry out too quickly even though they are unglazed terracotta. The glazed pots you can get now (I see blue ones in the local garden centre) probably work even better - though I personally prefer the "old fashioned" unglazed ones! This year I hope to resurrect two huge terracotta pots which came from Corfu and were (I think) water storage jars, and want to use them as well. They are about 1m high and look a bit like a wasps' nest. Because they are so big, the only way I can use them is to sit a plastic container in the top - they are far too big to fill with compost. I think I'll use something to trail down - petunias maybe - or probably tradescantia (spider plant) which I've used before.

The pots themselves were a surprise pressie years ago from my late OH. We first visited Corfu in the early 1970s and I remember admiring this sort of big "jar" in the grounds of an hotel. Some weeks later he said "there's something that's just arrived for you" and - guess what - two of them! He was an airline pilot and somehow had managed to acquire some and persuaded somebody to get them on a plane to Gatwick! What he hadn't anticipated, however, was that there were two little lizards still inside one of the pots, & which subsequently escaped into the garden. Maybe he should have been prosecuted for illegal importation of livestock!

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Joanbunting » Tue May 15, 2012 11:37 am

Hi

Re automatic watering system - we have one but I only use it if we are going away. Most of the water I use for watering my pots etc comes from "used" water i.e. bath, vegetable and clothes rinsing water. If not then from the well.

Too expensive to use mains if it can be avoided.

All the water we use in the potager comes from one of the wells but only one has a pump.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby mum-at-the-oven » Tue May 15, 2012 12:11 pm

Just a little tip-I save used tea bags to put in the bottom of hanging baskets which help to retain water-especially as here in the South East we still have a hose pipe ban.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Renée » Wed May 16, 2012 1:12 pm

Sorry that I missed looking in here, but will do in future.

I'm not much of a gardener, but I do enjoy making a hanging basket, which I line with moss and at the bottom of the basket, I put a circle of black plastic, which helps to retain the moisture as well as the moisture-retaining gel. I put three trailing plants at the top around the edge, trailing geraniums and fuchsias. I build the compost up to a mound in the centre and have trailing begonias and a mini type of dahlia in a pale orange at the top. I just cram the plants in and it usually works. My very best ones that I made were at my previous home and I didn't think to take a photo. Here's one that I made a couple of years ago.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/ ... 3Small.jpg

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Joanbunting » Wed May 16, 2012 1:49 pm

Renée that looks lovely.

I wish I could get wire baskets here. Your method is how my dad, who won prizes every year with the display on the balconies of their flat, taught me.

I did two more pots this morning along the white and silver theme with much help from Arnold and Dora the cats who love to help with the digging.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Renée » Wed May 16, 2012 2:48 pm

Thank you, Joan. It's nice to know that I'm on the right track! Do you have any photos of your dad's displays or was that before the age of digital cameras?! However did we manage without them!

Nice to have help from Arnold and Dora! I have an online friend who always gets help from her rescue hens.

There are wire baskets on Amazon and I'm sure that they ship to various countries these days.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GREEN-WIRE-HANG ... 749&sr=8-5

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Joanbunting » Wed May 16, 2012 3:40 pm

Renée wrote:Thank you, Joan. It's nice to know that I'm on the right track! Do you have any photos of your dad's displays or was that before the age of digital cameras?! However did we manage without them!

Nice to have help from Arnold and Dora! I have an online friend who always gets help from her rescue hens.

There are wire baskets on Amazon and I'm sure that they ship to various countries these days.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GREEN-WIRE-HANG ... 749&sr=8-5


Thank you so much Renée - will investigate for next year.

Sadly. although I do have pictures of my Dad's balconies they are not, as you suspected, digital.

Every year, for many years I brought back geraniums for him from Provence and on their diamond wedding in 1999 I gave them two of those "over the balcony railing"-type troughs filled with plants to see them through the winter. Sadly Mum died just a few months later. Dad came to live with us (in the UK and in France) and took over our minute terraced house garden in the UK and my pots etc in France until he died two years after that .- just after his 90th birthday.

I feel I owe it to him and to M's wonderful mother to do my absolute best.

M-I-L used to come here often. She was a great gardener and used to sit in our courtyard and describe how it ought to be. When she died we used quite a lot of what she left M to make the garden she had planned. So even more important that it should be treasured.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Renée » Wed May 16, 2012 5:05 pm

What a lovely story, Joan and what a lot of happiness your dad and also your m-in-law must have had helping with your courtyard garden in France. So sad about your mum, though. My mum died last year at the age of 101 and she kept fairly well and mentally alert until almost the end of her life.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Joanbunting » Thu May 17, 2012 2:10 pm

Hi Renée

I bet you are still missing her loads.

I think doing something like a garden or planting a special tree is a wonderful way to keep memories alive.

When M-I-L died I made the spray for her funeral using only flowers from her and other family members' gardens

M and I spent all morning next door in DD's garden. Sorting out the invading ivy, Virginia creeper and the one, quite big border. Her garden is much bigger than ours, but more open and prone to Mistral damage. We took an excutive decision to mulch the bed with pine bark and I have to say it looks a lot better. Dora and Arnold helped of course, much better than a rake for spreading the mulch, even though it was Bark :D :D

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby eloquentmameha » Sun May 20, 2012 1:51 am

Puss in boots - for good tempered hanging basket plants just check out the plants in municipal baskets and public gardens. these plants have to be drought/flood proof I always have non stop begonias with petunias and Ivy in exposed places and have the plants that need more regular care in sheltered areas.
mameha

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Puss-in-boots » Mon May 21, 2012 8:22 pm

Thankyou for all the advice given, the baskets are now done and hanging but even though i read too late about the tbags wondered why you put them in there m-a-t-oI will keep that in mind for the next venture as i want some in the garden for autumn/winter.

I thought HCP meant i had wash my hands loads with carex... :lol: :lol: thanks again for all the info.

Renee what astunning hanging basket that is and wow to your mum for being 101, what a fab life she had and to you joan what a lovey story as renee says, very touching. It doesn`t matter how old you are you always think your parents last forever but alas they don`t but as you say lovely to plant something in their memory. We did that for my dad when he passed away planting a dwarf willow but sadly it didn`t take but we still have the memories.

mameha i will take on board your advice too thanks very much. When i get chance i will take some pictures and upload them for you all as they seem to be coming along fine.

My neighbour suggested plant food and what with the sun these last few days they seem to be coming on a treat. :thumbsup

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Renée » Thu May 24, 2012 9:41 am

Yes, plant food is a good idea, Puss-in-Boots, although most composts contain nutrients which last for about three months. I've started using Miracle-Grow once a week.

The weather has been glorious here and I have a few flowers appearing, so will take photos as it develops.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby Puss-in-boots » Wed Jun 13, 2012 6:45 pm

I finally remembered to upload the photos of the baskets.

Image

Image

Image

They are looking fuller that these pictures taken some time ago so will take some more and upload them, thanks for all the advice so far.

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Re: Hanging Baskets

Postby jeral » Wed Jun 13, 2012 8:35 pm

:) Trailing petunias were always one of my favourites. Well done for getting the fuschias to grow - some peeps are a dab hand but much as I love them, seemingly they don't like me so takes hat off to you.

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