A two year old planting, ready for rejuvenation
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Considering I’d originally planted the basket a couple of years ago, and that the ‘annual’ Verbena survived two Williamsburg winters to return and bloom the following spring, I can’t complain.
Add to that poor soil (compost I found on-site at the garden) and those daffodil bulbs I planted in there for spring interest. By early summer 2020, the basket was struggling. It hung in full sun at the botanical garden where it got irregular, but loving attention. The Creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia, had grown in lushly. But the basket was no longer beautiful, and the Verbena was fading. We just couldn’t keep the plants properly watered in July’s unrelenting heat.
Do you have a hanging basket that is struggling in summer’s heat? Do you have plants under-performing because you can’t keep their container sufficiently watered?
The ongoing challenge with any container planting, especially baskets and window boxes, is to keep the plants supplied with nutrients and enough water that they don’t frequently wilt. Some climates make container gardening easier than others. Many municipal plantings get daily, professional attention from a team of horticulturalists. Some plants adapt better to growing crowded into baskets with just a few inches of soil, than others.
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When you think about it, a hanging basket is a pretty extreme environment for many plants. That said, there are some reasonably simple and inexpensive hacks that anyone can use to make that basket more comfortable for living, blooming plants.
It is smart to begin with the largest basket your space, and the support it will hang from, can accommodate. Larger baskets mean more soil to hold moisture, and more space for roots to grow. A 14″-16″ basket is a good size to work with. If you are working with a window box rather than a basket, look for ones at minimum 6″ deep.
Next, use good, fresh potting soil. You might add additional perlite to equal a quarter of the total soil volume, which improves drainage and makes the finished basket much lighter. Mix this in well, along with some slow release fertilizer like Epsoma’s Plant Tone or Osmocote. To keep plants actively growing and blooming, they need nutrients. Most potting mixes are sterile, without the nutrients commonly found in garden soil (which is too dense and heavy for a hanging basket or container). Adding slow release fertilizer helps bring out the best performance in your chosen plants.
Mix up enough amended soil to fill the basket in a separate container, and then use a scoop to transfer a little at a time to fill in around each plant as you place it.
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This wire basket has a fresh coir liner and an inner liner of a plastic bag. A sponge cut into small bits will help conserve water.
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I generally prefer wire baskets with a coco or coir liner. Baskets will dry out exceptionally fast when the heat index is over 100F and there isn’t a cloud in the sky for hour after hour on a summer day. Even baskets watered generously before 8 AM may be dry again by mid-afternoon. Coir makes a better liner than the traditional sphagnum moss, but is still exceptionally porous.
My first hack is to line the basket with an additional plastic liner to aid water retention. You might use a large plastic shopping bag, a dry cleaner bag, or similar light-weight sheet of plastic. If there aren’t holes in the plastic already, use the point of your scissors to poke a few holes so the basket will drain in heavy rain. I used a shopping bag disqualified from cat-litter duty due to a few large holes already poked in the bottom. The bag probably won’t fit into your basket perfectly, and you’ll likely need to cut some vertical darts to allow it to open wide enough to lie smoothly against the sides of your liner.
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My second hack involves a cellulose kitchen sponge. I have a bag of new, dehydrated and pressed Trader Joe’s brand sponges and am giving this brainstorm a trial to see how well it works. If you don’t have dried pressed sponges available, try any cellulose sponge that doesn’t have any chemical or soap products pre-loaded on it. Just cut the sponge up into small pieces. Use most of them in the bottom of the basket between the plastic liner and the soil. I partially filled the liner with soil, and then added a few more fragments of sponge around the outside edge of the basket.
The sponges will serves as little reservoirs to soak up excess water when it is available and release it later to the soil and roots when it is needed. I placed several sponge fragments around those holes in the bag to soak up water before it drains out.
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Use fresh potting mix amended with slow release fertilizer like Osmocote (here). If the mix is dense, add additional perlite, up to a quarter of the total volume. Here additional pieces of sponge are added around the edges of the basket. These will plump up once the basket is watered for the first time.
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Fill your container about 1/2 full of fresh potting soil and then begin placing plants, and filling back around each one with prepared potting soil.
I placed the entire soil ball from my old basket planting in a plastic box before using my hori hori knife to begin prying the various plants apart. I saved and re-used all of the pieces of the Verbena that I could find and the rooted bits of Dichondra,which had filled the basket last summer. Only a few bits of it survived the winter and have been competing with the Lysimachia for resources.
A lot of cleaning up may be needed to remove old, withered leaves and stems. A pair of sharp scissors is my favorite gardening tool.
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Break apart the individual plants into smaller hunks, discarding most of the old soil. Clean out old and withered stems and leaves as you re-plant each division.
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I settled the divisions with Verbena in the center and added a few chunks of Lysimachia around the edges. Creeping Jenny grows quickly and will fill in within a few weeks. I want the Dichondra to have a chance here to re-establish itself. I’ll reserve the remaining parts of the old planting, including those dormant bulbs, for another use.
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Settle the divisions you want to re-use into fresh soil
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Finally, I still had a few rooted cuttings of Portulaca on hand. I brought home a generous portion of cuttings from my favorite grower a few weeks ago and have had them rooting on the deck in a box of vermiculite and potting soil. I’ve been planting them out in various places for the last few weeks, but had enough still on hand to add seven or eight rooted stems to empty spots in this new planting.
Rooted cuttings can be worked in to established basket arrangements to refresh and update them. They are easier to work in than nursery plants since they have a smaller root ball. Keep well watered as they grow in.
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Rooted Portulaca cuttings ready to transplant
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Using very drought tolerant plants is the next hack for planting drought tolerant basket arrangements. Succulents, like Portulaca or Sedums, have the ability to absorb and store water when it is available and then go for long periods of time without additional watering. They have a waxy coating on the epidermis of each leaf and stem to reduce evaporation. They can remain plump and vital when other plants are crisping up in the sun.
When selecting plants for baskets, pay attention to their water needs and their resilience to drought. As more beautiful succulents come to market, choosing appropriate succulent and drought tolerant plants for container arrangements becomes easier.
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Lysimachia, Creeping Jenny, is a drought tolerant vine that tolerates full sun. It roots at every node and can take over a planting. Here, I’ve used a few divisions and left the remainder for another use later.
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The final hack for hanging baskets involves applying a mulch. Bare soil loses moisture much faster than does mulched soil. The best mulch in our climate is fine gravel, like aquarium gravel. Pea gravel is another choice. Both choices do add some weight to the basket, but they reduce evaporation, keep the plants clean and healthy without soil splashing up on them, cool the soil, and provide some protection to roots and geophytes you may plant in the basket. We have curious squirrels who sometimes dig in pots and baskets if not discouraged by a gravel mulch. Other choices include larger stones, small seashells, flat glass beads, marbles or glass chips, moss, and vines that fill in as a ground cover, like the Lysimachia.
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I have used a few rocks, glass beads and shells to anchor rooted cuttings in this new arrangement and have sprinkled additional Osmocote on top of the planting. use rocks or shells to hide the raw, trimmed edges of the plastic liner. I still need to apply some fine, gravel mulch before this basket is ready to return to the Williamsburg Botanical Garden.
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Once the basket is planted, and potting soil worked in firmly around all of the roots, add your mulch, and then water the basket well. I like to water the basket with plain water first to wet everything, and then come back a short time later with a foliar feed of fish and seaweed emulsion to help the plants adjust and to provide trace minerals to the soil.
In spring, you can get by with hanging that basket into its permanent place right away. In summer, I like to give a day or two for the plants to settle in and adjust in the shade before moving the basket to its permanent spot. A stretch of cloudy, wet weather is best for a new basket. But when there is a lot of sun, I like to give the plants a head start on settling their roots into their new home in a shady spot before putting them under stress in full sun.
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A Portulaca cutting has been growing in the edge of this basket for a few weeks now. Once established, they grow quickly and bloom prolifically in full or partial sun.
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Each gardener has to understand their own micro climate and preferred plants to come up with solutions that work for them. If I were gardening in the Pacific Northwest, I might not need to line my basket with plastic or add cut up sponges to the soil. The more realistic we are about our own growing conditions, the better job we can do with our plantings for lasting beauty.
If your hanging baskets have been less than spectacular, you might try some of these hacks to see how they work for you. Don’t be afraid to re-work an established basket with an eye to improving it. Changing out some of the plants, removing some of the more agressive plants, fertilizing and refreshing the soil may make all the difference in how well your planting performs.
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The basket rests in a shady spot before being returned to its place at the garden. The Portulaca and Verbena will fill in and begin to bloom again by the end of July.
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Woodland Gnome 2020
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Forest Garden 