Traditional hanging baskets are in fact made of metal mesh and are lined with moss.
Choose your Container
The secret is to get the biggest basket as possible to make sure there is a lot of compost to hold that moisture; the all-important moisture during the summertime.
You get a couple of options on liners to hold the compost into the wire basket. One is a fleece which literally lines the whole basket up and fills all the space so you really just plant the surface of the hanging basket.
Choose your filler
If you use moss it enables you to push plants through the side of the basket to give you that added dimension giving you better flower colour very early on. Personally speaking I love the moss, my old mate moss really looks the business with that softened out surface before all the plants grow.
Here’s a really great tip, most of the baskets are almost like a half cut football so therefore very difficult to plant because of its rounded base, wobbling all over the place. What I normally do is get an old plant pot or a bucket and position the basket into the plant pot or bucket giving me the stability to add the compost.
First of all add moss to the base of the basket about halfway up then line that with newspaper. This helps in a couple of ways; it stops the compost falling out of the base in between the moss and it also finally rots down and adds a little bit of substance to the compost when the roots of your plants are well established.
Choose your Compost
I do suggest at this point that you do use hanging basket compost because it adds a couple of things. It contains a wetting agent to enable you to water the basket or container so much easier if it is dry, and it has the right nutrients for baskets and containers to keep your plants well fed during the growing season.
You can add a water slice or hydration crystals which enables the plant to hydrate itself much easier during the season. The water slices are available from garden innovations and they are a cracking bit of kit. What I normally do is make sure that I leave 2 cm between the surface of the soil and the top just to stop the water pouring out all over the sides.
Fill your Container
I have the Moss positioned halfway up the basket, I’ve got newspaper lining it and we’ve got compost in their too. I start by adding in a few trailing plants through the side, planting them horizontally and literally letting the roots lie down on the soil inside the basket to allow the foliage of the plant to hang loose on the outside.
A smart move is to actually plant the trailing plants through the sides and gaps of the wire basket enabling them to stick out and trail down. I then build up a little bit more of the moss up to the surface of the container and line the basket with another circle of newspaper.
Fill up with compost and then you are ready for the rest of your plants.
Which Plants to choose
Go for uprights, trailers and fillers, a great example of uprights would be Fuchsia’s or Geraniums. Trailers can be Ivy, Helichrysum or Lobelia,good fillers would be things like Begonia Semperflorens, Busy Lizzie’s or Petunia’s
I would start by planting your big plant first; dig a little hole in the middle and bring the compost back and firm in well, then plant your trailers around the outside at 12 o’ clock, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock. Then add your filler plants into the remaining free space. Do not over pack the basket so as to leave some space for the plants to develop.
Water the basket well, some of the soil will sink down with the weight of the water which will give you a chance for a little top up of compost. But remember leave a bit of a gap in between the surface of the soil at the top of the basket to aid watering.
Where to place your Container
Then position your basket into a sunny location to make sure you maximise the amount of flower that you can get. Your best results will be achieved by using liquid feed for your plants during the growing season.
Happy planting!
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