Wilted Hangups

Author: Tammy Clayton

Article: 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.