Tips For Planting a Wire Hanging Basket
The 16″ wire hanging basket with purple calibrachoa, yellow and white zinnias, and yellow mecardonia.
Now that the weather has settled, it’s time to plant the hanging basket. Okay, it’s 43°F in Helena, Montana, so you’ll have to wait a while. But here in Charlotte, it’s already 90°. We’ve had beautiful spring weather for weeks now, and gardens all over town are showing new life.
It is confirmed once again that I could never move back to a colder winter climate. Picking tomatoes here in early June is commonplace rather than a rarity. In the past, I’ve lived where a ripe tomato for a Fourth of July barbecue won neighborhood kudos! It’s not the summer heat I look forward to but rather the longer growing season and greens that grow through the winter.
I bought several pots of annuals two weeks ago but haven’t planted them. The plan is to refresh the wire hanging basket, and to fill the front beds with color. Complicating matters, though, is when the new siding will be installed. Our building has been rescheduled to a much earlier date, so no gardening will take place until the work has been completed.
A Few Preliminaries
Can I Reuse Old Potting Soil In the New Hanging Basket?
The hanging basket that held blooming violas and a few perennials over the winter will be emptied. The old soil, which still has value in the garden, will be dug into one of the flower beds. Organic components (peat moss and fine pine bark, primarily) break down, enriching the soil.
Used potting soil can be broken up and thrown under the shrubs or topdressed in a thin layer on the lawn. More options include adding it to the compost pile and using it in the backfill when planting trees and shrubs. I never throw away old potting soil, and, of course, I’ll save the perennials. But for new hanging baskets, use fresh potting soil for the best results.
Soil in large planters can be used again if it still has good tilth and hasn’t been waterlogged. It’s good idea, however, to replace the top third of soil. If diseased plants grew in it, I would discard the soil.
Refresh/Reuse
If the metal frame looks a bit tattered, now is the time to clean and dry it. Buy a can of spray paint, in the color of your choice, and freshen it up. Look for one that will stick to the finish on the frame. Some are metal; others are vinyl-covered metal.
Maybe your mother the artist has some ideas about color. Jazz it up a little in a shady spot, or color-coordinate the paint color with the flower colors. If you prefer classic black or bright white, those are fine, too. By the way, wire hanging baskets are also called “English Garden” baskets.
For a frame that looks only a little scuffed, try using a solution of horticultural oil (more concentrated than you would use for insects) wiped over the frame. I’ve used the oil to freshen used plastic pots, which often looked like new again. Be careful—horticultural oil makes surfaces slippery.
Line the Liner
Wire baskets are available with reinforced green sheet moss, but more often with a coconut fiber liner. I’ve used both, and have found the coco liners to be more durable, although I prefer the color of the moss.
If you need a new liner, garden centers stock both pre-formed liners and bulk rolls that can be cut to the length desired. Before shopping, measure the curve of your hanging basket, adding a bit extra, for a proper fit.
A Simple Trick
Here’s a trick I’ve used for many years: line the inside of the coco liner with a sheet of plastic. Reuse an empty mulch or potting soil bag, cut so it extends above the rim. The excess will be trimmed after planting. Now, punch several holes around the bottom third of the plastic to allow for drainage. In hot or dry climates, consider leaving the bottom 1″ to 1 1/2″ of the plastic intact. The soil and plants will absorb water that collects in the reservoir.
Coconut: source of coir for potting soils and coco liners for baskets.
This offers a few advantages. First, the plastic prevents soil contact with the coco fiber, delaying decomposition. A thick liner, made from coconut husks, will last an additional year or two.
Second, plastic prevents rapid evaporation of moisture from the soil. Plastic stops the hot dry wind from reaching the soil.
Third, plastic slows down infiltration of icy cold wind, delaying chilling of the soil in winter combinations.
And, fourth, soil won’t be lost through the thin, loosely woven spots in the liner. See if you can double up on the coco liner in those spots. And face the dark side of the plastic, if there is one, outward. This is less conspicuous than a bright yellow beacon peering out from the between the fibers.
Other Options
Perhaps you have other materials hanging around the shed that can substitute for a coco liner. A few layers of burlap, landscape fabric, an old blanket, or that unused fiber grow pot could work for this growing season. Still, I would line it with a plastic sheet for the reasons stated above.
A repurposed grow pot, now used as a liner for the hanging basket.
Where To Place the Hanging Basket
Notice how weight is distributed along the vertical part on the left, pushing bracket against the wall.
Have you decided where the shepherd’s hook will be placed? Have you already installed a sturdy bracket on the fence or deck post? Well-constructed wrought iron is costly, but it lasts a long time. Look for the thicker, heavier hooks and brackets. Visit the hardware store for special anchors and instructions if attaching the bracket to a brick surface.
Make sure the bracket or the hook is large enough to accommodate your hanging basket. This isn’t a concern with smaller baskets but is often overlooked for the large ones. Hardware is available in different sizes, so measure first, or you might find that the large hanging basket you want to use won’t fit onto the shepherd’s hook you already have.
Sometimes it’s hard to determine whether the vertical part of the bracket should be placed above or below the horizontal part. Securing the vertical side below the horizontal arm, as in the image above, helps direct the force against the wall. The bracket is less likely to pull away from the wall or post.
Sun Or Shade?
Pay close attention to the number of hours of direct sunlight the chosen location will receive. As the sun changes its path across the sky from one month to the next, the amount of sunlight will vary. A location near the front door might get lots of sun in April but could be in almost full shade once the trees leaf out.
Don’t expect a blazing burst of color from plants that need 7 or 8 hours of sun if you place the hanging basket under the semi-shady deck. Plant tags often erroneously indicate “partial sun/full sun” for plants that really need full sun. Partial sun to us gardeners, by the way, is 4 hours of sun.
Ask salespeople at the garden center for advice about light requirements. Petunia, verbena, calibrachoa, lantana, zinnia, and scaevola need full sun. Lobelia, bacopa, browallia, torenia, and some of the begonias will do well in morning sun and bright afternoon shade in this hot climate. Caladium, anthurium, ‘Non-Stop’ tuberous begonias, ferns, and foliage plants can take various levels of shade.
Choosing Plants For Your Hanging Basket
Plants have upright, mounding, or trailing habits. For smaller baskets, perhaps only mounding and trailing plants will fit. If single-variety monoculture is your preference (for example, a 12″ pot of purple Wave petunias or a 10″ pot of sky blue lobelias), go for it.
Geranium flower.
If you want a pot of zonal geraniums, avoid hanging it so high that all you see is the bottoms of the leaves and the pot. Place it with the flowers at eye level or enhance it with some trailing vinca vine and a few mounding white or yellow calibrachoas. Adding a trailing element creates greater interest.
Stately Salvia ‘Black and Bloom’ attracts hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees.
The 16″ wire hanging basket, for the shepherd’s hook in the front garden, can hold 6 to 10 plants. A large perennial Salvia ‘Black and Bloom’ (photo, right; hummingbirds visit every morning!) grows in the bed behind the basket, next to a yellow-tipped arborvitae.
So, the color scheme will include blue ‘Laguna’ (heat-tolerant) Lobelia, purple calibrachoa (million bells, a small cousin of petunia), little yellow Mecardonia, and a few golden yellow and white (powdery mildew resistant) Zinnia angustifolia.
A Heuchera with orange-ish foliage might remain in the pot, if the color plays nicely with others. (A passionflower I had bought earlier in Hendersonville survived the summer in a tiny 2″ pot.)
I use this color combination in the fall, sometimes, when planting violas. It borrows from both the warm and the cool color palettes. When in doubt, combine colors next to each other on the color wheel (for example, red-orange-yellow [warm colors], or pink-blue-purple [cool colors]) or opposite each other (red-green, blue-orange, purple-yellow). Adding white calms everything down when using several colors.
(***Update***: While the annuals awaited completion of the siding installation, a few of them perished. It happens. I plugged the survivors into the basket and fertilized them. Six weeks later, you can see how nicely it filled out. That’s the basket, at the top of this article. And I planted the passionflower, a vigorous vine, in the garden for the gulf fritillary butterflies. Autumn, 2019.)
Zinnia angustifolia ‘Star’ series, disease resistant.
Consider These Color Combinations:
- red-white
- yellow-white. These first two options make clean, crisp combinations.
- chartreuse, green, orange, and white look good together
- shades of yellow-orange-cream
- blue-yellow-white
- red-white-yellow
- silver or gray and shades of pink
- purple-blue-silver-pink-white
- lavender-purple-white
- warm maroon-peach-coral-cream-sky blue
Generally, I avoid using gray/silver with pale yellow. Orange and pink together don’t do anything for me.
We tend to gravitate toward our favorite colors, so try adding varieties you haven’t tried before. See if you can introduce foliage color (caladium, coleus, lysimachia, heuchera, sweet potato vine, begonia) that echoes the color of a flower.
A contrast between flower and foliage forms might also bring greater interest. Adding fine foliage or delicate flowers (nierembergia, diascia, bacopa, lobelia, alyssum, euphorbia ‘Diamond Frost’, mondo grass) contrasts effectively with bolder textures.
Headings
Page 1: Tips For Planting a Wire Hanging Basket, A Few Preliminaries (Can I Reuse Old Potting Soil In the New Hanging Basket?, Refresh/Reuse, Line the Liner), Where To Place the Hanging Basket (Sun Or Shade?), and Choosing Plants For Your Hanging Basket (Consider These Color Combinations)
Page 2: Ready to Start?, Time To Play In the “Dirt”, Timed-Release Fertilizer, and Maintaining the Hanging Basket (Water, Soluble Fertilizer, Deadheading, New Varieties, Pruning Your Hanging Basket, Insects and Spider Mites, Slugs, Deer!)
