Hanging Baskets

Hanging baskets are "spots of living color" that accent architecture by picking up elements of the landscape and putting them at eye level. Hanging baskets can add a whole new dimension to any location.

Plant Selection

When selecting plant for your hanging basket, first take a moment to decide what effect you want to create. Flowering bedding plants that are annuals or perennials mixed with complementing foliage are usually a good choice. These plants can be selected to theme with the existing features in your landscape.

Important things to keep in mind when selecting plants for hanging baskets:

• Does the plant have a cascading habit?
• Will the plant grow relatively quickly and produce a full, bushy basket?
• Are the plants right for that location - shade lovers for shady locations and sun lovers for sunny locations?
• Did you select the appropriate plant for the season? Winter annuals won't do well during the heat of summer.

Making Your Basket

Hanging baskets grown for outdoor locations can be planted in sphagnum moss baskets. As well as looking good, the sphagnum helps retard fungus. However, when you hang the sphagnum basket, make sure you have good support-after watering, these baskets can weigh from 20-60 pounds! Sphagnum baskets can either be planted in the top - with the plants allowed to cascade over the sides - or in the sides and the top to create a ball. Planting in the sides as well as the top produces a fuller basket. In turn, the basket will be ready in a shorter period of time. On either type basket, check your wire hangers often, as the water and fertilizer weaken the hanger over time.

When planting baskets, add one tablespoon of time-release fertilizer to the top of the basket. Fertilizing weekly with a water soluble fertilizer will help your basket fill in quickly and stay healthy.

Tips for Creating a Sphagnum Hanging Basket

• Always wear gloves when working with sphagnum moss.
• Soak un-milled sphagnum moss until wet and squeeze out excess water.
• Begin at the bottom of the wire basket and "stuff" the moss tightly into the rungs.
• Continue stuffing the moss into the rungs until you have completed the basket.
• While grasping the top of the wire hanger, bend all three of the hanger prongs at the same time to the desired level.
• Place the hanger on the basket.
• If putting small plants into the sides of the basket, poke holes in the sphagnum and place plants in the hole, level with the outside of the sphagnum.
• Fill basket to within one inch of the top of the basket with soil.
• Place plants in the top, add time release fertilizer.
• Water baskets well.

Maintaining Your Basket

Good maintenance can prolong the life of your basket. Once your basket is grown, maintaining it is time consuming but important to it's health and look.

Trimming is a special part of basket maintenance. By trimming old flowers every two or three weeks your basket can stay at its' peak for a long time. Certain plants - such as latana or verbena - require little or no trimming. Others, such as begonias and impatiens, are usually trimmed into balls of color.

During the warm months, watering daily is essential. During the cooler weather, watering can be slowed to every two to three days. Continue fertilizing weekly with a water-soluble fertilizer during the life of the basket.

Common pest problems on hanging baskets are mealy bugs and spider mites. Fungus can also become a serious problem, especially during the warmer months. Your local garden center or Agricultural Extension Service can help you with controls for these problems. If your basket becomes severely infested, isolate it from the others, prune out the problem and then treat with the appropriate control. Pruning of the affected plant is a fast way to reduce an insect population.

When your basket starts to deteriorate, you have several options: dispose of the plants and replant; severely prune and grow it out again if the plant is salvageable; or, if you have seasonal plants in a combination, replace them and start production again.

• Introduction

• Garden Tours

• Barb's Top 10 Disney Garden Attractions

• Brian's Top 10 Disney Garden Attractions

• Tips: Right Plant in the Right Place

• Tips: Interior Plants

• Backyard Habitats

• Butterfly Gardening

• Bonsai and Penjing

• Water Gardening

• Flower Gardening

• Cutting Gardens

• Disney StyleTopiary

• Disney Style Horticulture at Disney's Animal Kingdom

• Disney Style Hanging Baskets

• Disney Style Floating Gardens

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