What has grown well in your hanging baskets?

Zeusiblue

What have you has success/failurse this year with hanging baskets? I tried sweetpeas, which now look very brown and straggly .So don't think i will be trying those again. Also tried violas. They look really nice but are a real pain as they need consant deadheading ( zillions every day). Just thinking about next years plants and looking at petunias.They seem to flower for ages,very prolific and easy to deadhead too.What have you tried this year and what would you recommend (or not) ?

wallbash

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3141252

Terrible start . Too early and very little, BUT they now look great and very easy.

Next year will stick with Trailing Begonias, but will vary the colours , all the same in one basket but a different shade in the others.

peter_the_piper

Petunias are great as are cuttings raised lobelia. Try Torenia (wishbone flower)for a change along with White Bacopa and Balcony geraniums.

Zeusiblue

When placing the Petunias in the hanging baskets how many would you use? I like the look of the tidal wave petunias and the easy petunias as well as the surfing petunias. The basket has about 10 slots. i think. its the easy hanging basket with the slot in pieces.If i placed a tidal wave petunia in each slot would that be too much for the basket? I think the tidal wave petunia does spread a lot ! How many max would be ideal for a 14" basket?

peter_the_piper

Personally I would put a max of 5 in a 14" basket, however if you are patient then 3 would suffice. Just ensure that you water every day (twice in really hot weather,) and feed (miracle grow/phostrogen/chempack)once a week. Mix water retentive gel into the compost of each basket for insurance. I would probably choose tidal wave over the easy ones as they grow bigger. Leave some flowers on later in the year and try to save some seed for growing next year, unlikely you will get the same colours but its worth the experiment and it does work.

Zeusiblue

WOW that's a humongous display you've got going on there. Really impressive. Do you find the Petunias are easy to grow from seed?
Thanks for all your advice.

peter_the_piper

Yes, but fairly slow. I do have an advantage with heated greenhouses. They don't seem to grow as well under about 10deg C. Start them off in Jan/Feb but watch the seeds are quite small.
ps. There are another 7 troughs in the row so it looks quite good.