Starting Your Own Hanging Baskets

The end of April – mid May is the best time to start your own amazing hanging baskets. From herbs to veggies to flowers, growing plants in hanging containers is easy and fun to do! Here are a few pointers to help ensure success with your “start from scratch” project:
Pick a great container. The pot should be made of a sturdy material that will stand up to the elements. Plastic, ceramic, and wire (with moss liners) are the most popular. Often these planters can be used year after year. Make sure the planter has drainage holes in the bottom. If you choose ceramic, make sure the weight of the pot is not more than 4lb or so.
Use only professional growing potting soil. We always use what is called “soil less” media. Containing no topsoil, it is a specially formulated media for growing plants in containers; it is a blend of peatmoss, corn husks, perlite, vermiculite, and often growth supplements such as fertilizer and micorrhizal fungus. It has the best aeration and composition for container gardening in the prairies; the PH of the media is also regulated to around a value of 6 (slightly acidic), which the vast majority of plants find optimal. This media is also excellent at retaining moisture, which is a definite boon in our Chinook zone. Always ask your nursery professional for soil less media for containers.
Be sure to brainstorm the reason you want to grow plants in a container before heading out to the nursery: what is the function of the hanging basket? Is it to give color to a lackluster area of the front stoop? Is it because you have no space in the garden and still really want to grow some veggies? Is your bathroom window basically looking into your neighbor’s bathroom window and you would like some privacy? Or is it that you love fresh herbs and have the perfect sunny spot on your back deck? Determining the function of the basket will help you with selecting appropriate plants.
Pick plants whose growth habit and flowers/edibles suit the function of the planting. Always select plants that inspire you! For a high-hanging basket at a sunny front door, perhaps you want stunning, floriferous annuals that spill rainbows of color over and beyond the pot edges…how about a mix of wave petunias, chartreuse potato vine, and ivy geraniums? For the gardener that is tired of chasing the rabbits out of the back yard, growing edibles in hanging baskets is a great solution; simply select varieties that do well in pots, i.e. tumbler tomatoes, everbearing strawberries, leaf lettuce, etc. If you want privacy in short order, try planting large, leafy perennials in hanging baskets along with a few blooming plants. Perennial plants like ligularia, dicentra, and darmella grow very quickly, are beautiful with or without their flowers, and are easy to keep from year to year; simply heel into the garden in the fall.
Fertilize all outdoor hanging baskets once per week with a well-balanced water-soluble fertilizer; use 20-20-20 by Plant Prod or Nurseryland for herbs and flowers, and 15-30-15 by Plant Prod or Nurseryland for edible crops. Fertilizing with water-soluble plant food is easy: simply mix 4-5ml (i.e. about a teaspoon) into a litre of water.
Along with fertilizing, most hanging baskets will need to be watered 3-4 times per week. If in doubt as to whether your soil is wet or dry, stick your finger into the soil in the pot to a depth of an inch or so. If it is moist at that depth, the pot doesn’t need water; if it is dry, the pot should be watered. How much is enough water? With drainage holes in the pot, you don’t worry have to worry about measuring – just water until the pot drains out of these holes ( in the production greenhouse, we usually find that we water for 5 seconds or so before we see water draining from the pot)!
Starting your own hanging baskets now is a super way to get a jump on the season. Rather than being relegated to the offerings of the garden centres around town, you can customize your planting to suit your specific needs; starting early will ensure your plants grow vigorously come mid-May. Be creative and have fun with your project! As playwright Beverly Nichols once said,”To dig one’s own spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?!”