It’s that time of year when you start to see those tumbling, beautifully-flowering hanging baskets in your neighbourhood, outside pubs or strung up on lamp posts. I always hear clients asking me how they can get theirs to look the same and look perfect for the whole of summer. The key to their success is constant care, more so than with standard container planting.
Watering is key to keep them looking fresh and fabulous
People seem to forget that baskets won’t receive much rainfall if they are positioned under an overhanging roof. You can tell if your basket needs watering by its weight – if it is light it needs water.
Dense planting and taking steps to ensure water doesn't drain away too much helps, so line the basket with absorbent matting. Then water, water, and water again!
Don't feed every time you water, just do that weekly to replace vital nutrients. I would advise using a liquid fertiliser. However, If you're at the planting stage, you can add some slow-release feed pellets to aid the plants during summer.
Putting a hanging basket in a windy spot may stress the plants, as they'll lose moisture, so consider where your baskets will go and that you may have to further increase the amount of water you give them!
Don’t forget to dead-head the flowers. It’s important to snip off dead flowers as this will encourage fresh growth. If you don’t dead-head your flowers then they will assume their job is done and put all their energy into creating seeds.
Avoid half-dead hanging baskets by replacing any dead or dying plants. Take your basket down and carefully ease out the offending plants and replace it with a new plug and before long it will fill the gap. While you have your basket down, you can prune back any leggy plants to encourage your plants to produce new shoots from the base. This will give hanging baskets that are densely packed with healthy plants.
If you would like further advice or information about how to care for your hanging baskets, then please get in touch.
