Wilted Hangups
Well-dressed porches everywhere wear colorful hanging baskets
and fantastic mixed containers for summer. Even if the
occupant's budget only allows one 10" pot hanging pot there will
be brilliant color somewhere on that porch. The well-dressed
porch is a must do thing whether your porch is a tiny point of
entry or a Victorian wrap-around... the unwritten social code is
that flowers are supposed to spill color from the facia toward
the ground. If there is a railing then an assortment of pots and
more plants of varying types begin to cluster up on the flat
surface. Planter boxes and clay pots appear like runway markers
down the sides of wide front porch steps. Stately terra cotta
pots and urns mark the front approach to many a home. Many
different styles of well-dressed porches can be chosen from and
created but the fact remains that you must dress that porch. I
am all for this dressing of porches. There is no bare rail space
left on my own deck any summer. There have been years that the
front porch was virtually hidden behind the curtain of flowers
and ferns.
Greenhouses across America do a fabulous job of turning out a
lot of beautiful annual containers. Delight will seize your
senses the moment you step into the retail greenhouse in April
and May. The warm humid atmosphere is a jungle of rainbow colors
all grown to perfection. Your hair may go flat in there but it
is worth the leisurely trip down the aisles. It could be hours
later before you can manage to drag yourself back outside again.
The showing of junglized flora at its finest can hold anyone's
rapt attention for very long spans of time.
The selection of the perfect color statement for the porch is
not made quickly or easily; finally you complete the mission
inside the glass bubble. The pots are loaded into your vehicle
and you are off to deck out your porch and patio. Some merely
hang the pots just as they are from the hooks at the roofline.
Others remove the hanger and slid into the yawning cavity of
ornamental pots and urns strategically place for visual effect.
Moss baskets, clean plastic pots and new terra cotta all filled
with a garden of earthly delights festoon porches, decks and
patios from sea to shining sea by Memorial Day.
The greenhouse did its job keeping that container fed and
watered in optimum performance levels at perfect temperatures
for its rapid growth. The fact that you get to cast your eyes
upon that beauty every day fills your soul with a feeling
nothing else would impart. The convenience of being able to walk
in a store and carry out very mature and lovely mixtures of
plants only hardy in the tropics is one that America enjoys with
gusto.
The adoption of a moss basket while visually stunning compared
to the same in a plastic hanging pot shows you nothing of the
road that lies ahead for the two of you. Consumers like the fact
that that huge 15" moss basket is light as a feather and easy to
tote around. The one fact that everyone seems to not grasp is
that the beautiful things you have just adopted are planted in a
mixture designed for life in a perfect atmosphere. The potting
medium is designed specifically to not hold moisture and drain
out very rapidly. Those plants are addicted to drip-line water
and food... intravenous nutrition turned on and off by a
computer if you will. While they will adjust to you only feeding
them once a month, they cannot go without the correct amount of
moisture throughout a day in the hot dry air and relentless
baking rays of the sun. Not if you want them to remain lush and
alive, which is most likely the full intention behind you
purchasing them.
Plastic containers planted by a greenhouse will hold moisture
twice as long as a moss basket. The breeze can go right through
the moss causing it to air-dry the potting medium at a rapid
pace, add heat to that air and the dryness happens even faster.
Inside a greenhouse there is no breeze, the still air is filled
with humidity. That non-moving humid atmosphere breeds pests and
disease. To ward off rot and other unwanted occurrences, the
growers must use rapidly drying content in their pots or face
loosing vast quantities of plants to problems that occur in the
greenhouse bubble. Once out in the real world, you must supply
enough moisture to the same pots to help them thrive in an alien
atmosphere.
Fuchsias in moss baskets even when watered before you left for
work will most likely be beginning to droop by about 2 pm and
you will not be home for at least 4 more hours. If you only for
one evening forget to water those Ivy Geraniums they will show
signs of damage by the next morning. An occasional slip up is
usually repairable, but let it happen one too many times and you
will undoubtedly have a basket full of crispy critters. The best
outcome with all of these beautiful plants is achieved if you
repot them in a larger container than the one you got it in with
real soil mixed with a bit of sphagnum and pearlite for drainage
and cover the top of that sphagnum core with some soil as well.
That simple inch of soil around and under the existing quick-dry
core will help it hold moisture better until you return home at
the end of the day. Real soil in a moss basket is not going to
work however as the soil will wash out with draining water and
deposit mud on the floor beneath it. Moss baskets are very
thirsty things. You might consider creating your own drip-line
irrigation system for them and other hanging baskets. All the
parts are available at Home Depot, including inexpensive timers
you can put on your hose and set to go on and off at intervals
throughout the day. This would be the optimum solution as even
when you go on vacation, it will water your hanging pots and you
will not have to rely on a neighbor or family member to do this
for you.
I have found that I have far better luck with my annual baskets
if I buy the plants small and pot the baskets myself with real
soil and pearlite so they do not get water logged. No the pots
will not be overflowing until the end of June, but if I forget
to water them one night they will be fine and not get too dry
before the next morning. I can with my busy schedule keep nice
looking plants on the front porch until the frost takes them out
at the end of well-dressed porch season. One of these days when
I find the time to install a drip-line water system I will go
back to buying my hanging plant baskets from a local greenhouse.
Until them, I am just as happy with not cooking them all to a
crisp while I am madly dashing through my hectic schedule that
does not take me past the front porch so that I am reminded to
water the plants everyone sees from the road. Some day I will
have lovely moss baskets of fabulous red & purple Fuchsias there
instead of dependable old Geraniums.
About the author:
Read more great Gardening articles at:
http://www.lostintheflowers.com
About the author:
Raised by a highly respected & successful
landscape contractor in the metro Detroit area, Clayton wanted a
career in anything but landscaping! Now an award-winning
landscape designer, Clayton runs Flowerville Farms, a mail-order
nursery in Michigan. Read more at LostInTheFlowers.com.
Tammy Clayton
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