How to Make Hanging Flower Baskets

Flower baskets are an integral part of home decoration. They offer a fascinating and decorative look to the patio, balcony, or terrace of your home. A hanging basket full of beautiful, colorful flowers mesmerizes everyone's mind. If you do not want to spend much money, you can create a magnificent basket of your own; what you need is just a little imagination and creativity.

A careful selection of basket is very important to hold the plants and flowers properly. A wide variety of baskets is available in the market, including the plastic and wooden baskets. You can select from the simple wire mesh/solid plastic pots with a saucer or the hanging clay pots. The basket should not be too big or too small in size.

The wire containers should be lined with any of the medium materials, such as a mat of ground cover (sphagnum moss or blue star creeper), or coconut fiber. The solid baskets are made up of plastic or heavy-duty paper fiberboard.

They are lightweight and are available in various attractive styles and colors. The plastic baskets retain water better than their wire counterparts. You can also choose from the terra cotta, ceramic, or plastic containers.

There are several different plants that are suitable for this purpose, like moss rose, ivy geranium, nasturtium, petunia, browallia, verbena, tuberous begonia, lobelia, wax begonia, columnea, lantana, fuchsia, and German ivy.

The plants should poke through the sides as well as cover the top of the basket so as to achieve a complete covering of flowers and cascading foliage. You can use a single type of plant or a mixture. A color scheme of white and pink, orange and red, or mauve and red/blue gives a stunning look to the flower baskets.

The summer-flowering plants, such as ivy-leaf germanium, fuchsias, trailing nasturtium, petunias, and lobelia offer a very attractive appearance to the flower baskets.

You can easily make such baskets with help from the following simple steps:

• Choose the basket:
  Choose the hanging basket of an appropriate size and material. A porous basket is more preferable than the solid one, as it will drain off the excess water.

• Add soil:
  Fill the basket with a lightweight potting mix or a packaged mix. You can prepare your own mix with equal parts of perlite, peat moss, and vermiculite. Some of the packaged mixes consist of a slow-release fertilizer. 

• A mixture of the water-absorbing crystals and a water-absorbing mat helps to maintain the moisture in the basket. Fill the soil within 1-2 inches of the rim so that watering can be easily done.

• Plant the basket:
  You can fill the basket with a single kind of plant or a combination of different plants. Use of multiple species, such as trailing, tall, and midrange plants, gives a very fascinating look to the hanging basket. Keep the taller plants at the center and trailing plants along the borders of the basket. 

Try to include various bloom sizes, such as miniature rose, vinca, and petunia that offer large flowers, or lobelia, hyssop, and calibrachoa that have smaller blooms.

• Watering the plants:
  After planting, water the soil mix thoroughly. You should daily water the plants in the hanging basket during the hot weather. You can judge its water requirement by checking the soil. If the soil is dry, obviously it needs more water.

Hanging flower baskets are continuously exposed to sun and wind, hence they tend to dry out quickly, particularly during the summer. Therefore, a frequent watering is very essential. You can also use a special attachment for watering, using a kind of spout extension. You need to add a dilute liquid fertilizer at least once a week.

You can also use the slow-release fertilizer pellets, so that you need not add the fertilizers more frequently. Dead flowers should be removed as often as possible. It encourages the plant to produce more flowers instead of setting the seed. If the plant begins to get leggy, pinch the stem back a few inches to encourage new growth.