Design Your Own: Hanging Basket Plantings Can Look Artfully Natural 2/15/02

Annual plants that lend themselves to attractive hanging-basket designs give gardeners a head start: Horticulturist Emily Nolting recommends the following as good combinations of color, shape and color, but warns they are "just the tip of iceberg-size possibilities."

Sun-loving:

Basket Center	and	Toward the Edge (Sides)
Vining geranium		Bacopa and verbena, alternating
Scavolia (fan flower)		Trailing petunias, lantanas
Wave petunia		Vinca vine and scavolia
Pinched profusion zinia		Torina and trailing lantana
Dusty Miller		Vining geraniums and Petite licorice
Or, a random placement or mixture of...
* Million Bells calabrosa and periwinkle blue lobelia
* Sun Coleus, Jacob's Coat, Artemesia Limelight or Santolina Gray

Shade-loving:

Basket Center	and	Toward the Edge (Sides)
Non-stop begonia		Lamium and bacopa
Plumosa fern		Fushsia
Or....
*Impatiens, growing vigorously alone in one or mixed colors
* Exotic foliages, such as coleus, lamium, Lysimachia, Goldilocks, Illumination vinca vine, Salvia Icterina, Olympic Gold bacopa, or Petite licorice

MANHATTAN, Kan. – Few potted plants look as beautifully natural as a moss-covered hanging basket, filled with healthy, colorful flowers and graceful, trailing greenery.

The best way to achieve that look, said horticulturist Emily Nolting, is for gardeners to create it for themselves:

1. Buy a wire basket finished with long-fiber sphagnum moss, held in place by transparent fishing line. Or buy the materials separately and assemble them.

The wire must be galvanized or coated, to prevent rust. On the sides, the wire pieces should be no more than 2 inches apart, to ensure strength and stability. Baskets 14 to 16 inches in diameter can have good soil- and moisture-holding ability without becoming too heavy to handle.

To enclose the sides on your own, soak the long-fiber sphagnum moss in a bucket of warm water for several minutes. Then take handfuls of the wet moss and squeeze out the excess water. Tightly press it into the basket, starting from the bottom and working up the sides, so that the lining is about 2 inches thick all the way around.

For extra support – particularly if side wires are rather far apart – weave transparent fishing line around and between the wires, before or after installing the moss.

2. Install a soil-holding lining of burlap, to keep water runoff clear. To provide extra moisture-holding ability, also coat the bottom one-third of the burlap liner with a tar-type sealer. Or, place a circle cut from an old tarp, a shallow pot or a plate in the basket bottom.

3. Fill the basket with a good quality potting mix. If the mix contains no fertilizer, add a slow-release, encapsulated fertilizer such as osmocote, following package recommendations. Do not use any soil from the garden, because it may contain weed seeds or disease organisms. Garden soil also tends to be too dense and heavy for effective plant growth in pots.

4. Select plants that will grow well in the site you’ve selected and produce the colors you want. A 12- to 14-inch basket can hold about five of the plants gardeners most often select for hanging-pot culture. Whatever the varieties, however, give the plants room to grow. Place your tallest selection in the center and any trailing plants near the basket edge.

5. Add a shallow layer of sphagnum to the top of the soil, to insulate the plants and aid in moisture retention. This layer also will keep soil from spattering up on plants during watering and ensure that a downpour can’t flood soil up and over the basket’s sides.

"It’ll be a great improvement over geraniums in green plastic pots," Nolting said. "With attention to the plants’ watering and fertilizer needs, it also will be a beautiful, season-long addition – one that you designed – hanging under a tree, next to a patio or along a favorite walk."

K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.