Welcome to the Simple Garden Life Podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competiti. Hello and welcome everybody to the Simple Garden Life Podcast.
I am Jim Competti along with my wife Mary and Mary. Today we
are talking about fertilizing hanging baskets, or more importantly, how to keep your
baskets blooming. You know, hanging baskets are one of the most popular ways
to add instant caller to any outdoor space. They really can. They can
brighten up our patios. We use them all the time. They bring life
to back in front, porches, you name it. They had a touch
of class and beauty, you know, to anywhere you want to put them
as long as they're blooming, absolutely and keeping them looking great for an entire
summer can be a huge challenge. You can and that's exactly why fertilizing your
baskets and the best way possible can make all the difference. We'll get into
today's topic in full in just a minute, but as always, we want
to take a moment to remind everyone that you can always reach us via email
at the Farm at Owgarden dot com. And boy, right now it's the
heat of garden Sea and the emails are flying in and we love it.
We do. We get to answer a lot. It gives us a lot
of I guess content for our podcast and also for our websites. But boy,
you can always email us there at the Farm at Owgarden dot com and
you can also sign up to follow us at simple gardenlife dot com, follow
us on Facebook or your favorite podcast app, and be sure to check out
our Old World Garden YouTube channel as well. Hey, j before we get
started, I think we should tell everyone about how we are sharing a little
piece of the farm with some visitors. You know what, this is a
pretty big announcements front fighting Oh we are you know what. When we went
around the country and did all the states and got to see gardens and everything,
experience everything, we use harvest Host and harvest Host was really good to
us. You can stay at farms and wineries, breweries, you name it,
golf courses and you know, you pay an annual fee and you can
stay at the place for free, and we really enjoyed it. So for
us, we decided, you know, we've built this farm and it's now
at the point where we can start to share it. So we became a
Harvest Host and if you have a self contained camper and you're passing through,
you can spend a night here if you're a Harvest Host member. That's right.
It's absolutely free as a Harvest Host member. Once you pay your membership
fee. You can look us up on the harvest a host app excuse me,
or website. And you know, I mean, it's it is fun.
I mean, we've already had I think we signed up last week.
We've already had four campers stay here already. We pretty much you know,
have some bookings next few weeks. It's great. It's just a great way
for us to share the farm. We get to meet people, we can
do tours while you're here if you want. But just a really cool way
to experience old world garden farm. Absolutely, you can even tour the gardens
and see what we have to offer. That's right. So now let's talk
about hanging baskets or more importantly, how to keep them blooming, you know,
strong and beautiful all summer long. And to kick it off, let's
get to the question of the week, because it really kind of sets the
stage for everything. We get this question more than any other about hanging baskets,
especially this time of year. That's right. So the question of the
week is from Linda Crowley from Eugene, Oregon. Her question, I get
so frustrated with my hanging baskets every year. I could never seem to keep
my baskets much later than the end of June, no matter what I do.
They start off so big and beautiful in full blooms, but seems like
as soon as summer rise, my baskets just start to look awful. What
can I do to keep them flowering? Linda, you are not alone,
and there's a lot of things in your statement that we're going to cover in
today's podcast, a lot of factors that complain to the baskets not lasting.
So let's kind of just cover them all. And I think, Linda,
by the end of this podcast, you're going to, I guess, have
a better understanding of why and how to keep those baskets. So for starters
you mentioned, you know, my baskets are always so big in the early
spring. We talk about this all the time. That is one thing you
kind of want to stay away from, right Those baskets that are already huge
in the spring, they're overgrown. And you know what, as much as
I love getting a hanging basket on Mother's Day, you know those hanging baskets
are huge and beautiful, but they're going to be overgrown in a matter of
weeks. Yeah. And the reason that is is because a lot of these
growers early on they want those to you catch the shopper's eye. They plant
those. I mean as far back sometime there's November and December, and they're
growing them in their greenhouses. And it's great. I mean if you need
instant caller and you're hosting a Mother's Day brunch or you're hosting, but understand,
those baskets, unless you replant them into a very large basket later,
they are not going to last. The root structure is already too grown the
nutrients from the soil garden, and even if you start fertilizings, we'll get
into a little bit their root bound and it's impossible to try to save them.
Right. And even if you plant your own hanging baskets, you want
to make sure you don't overcrowd them and again use the larger basket sizes,
so a lot of times in stores you're going to see these ten and twelve
inch baskets, and they can be at a bargain price. There's nothing wrong
with them, but understand when you buy a ten or twelve inch basket,
it's not going to be able to last the whole year. A lot of
times we've done this before. We find a great deal on some hanging baskets
and we'll bring them home. We have our own fourteen, sixteen and eighteen
inch baskets. That's really what you want to say. I would say that
sixteen inch baskets are perfect ideal. Yeah, they can last all season long.
They have enough soil if you grow your planet slowly, that they're gonna
flower all year. But I mean, no matter how rich and furtive your
potting soil is, at the beginning of the growing season, your baskets are
eventually going to run out. And even if you plant them in larger baskets,
they're still going to take those nutrients. And when that happens, plants
quickly fade into a mass of wilded leaves, sparse blooms, and everybody's just
really upset when they start to see their baskets starts to fail. But how
when and what you fertilize flowing baskets with make a huge difference. Oh,
they're critical. I mean, they're critical factors and keeping your plants blooming and
booming. And that is exactly why we're gonna walk you through today's podcast.
So let's talk about the art of fertilizing, because it's not as simple as
going out and just blasting your plants with a lot of fertilizer. First of
all, it's gonna matter what you're using, as you said, Mary,
and it's gonna matter how often you're using. It's gonna matter the strength because
just saying I'm gonna fertilize my baskets with some giant, you know, huge
boost of fertilizer, We're going to talk about how that actually can really be
an issue later on. You're absolutely right, Jem. To give long lasting
blooming power to your hanging baskets, you really need to provide nutrients in a
low and slow manner. Yeah, I mean, if you if you don't
fertilize your plants at all, they're going to run out of energy. But
if you give them too much, and this is usually the problem, If
you give them too much or too large of a dose or two, you
know, too often. That's right, your plant are gonna they're gonna spend
all of their energy on growing. So here's what happens. When a plant
gets a huge dose of energy all at once, or too much energy,
you know, consistently, they stop trying to produce blooms. What they do
instead is they're like, I just want to get bigger, and so that's
at the expense of blooms. So that's why just throwing a ton of fertilizer
on is not always the answer. No, and fertilizing is often as much
of a problem for plants as well. It really is. I mean,
it gives plants a few moments of big, blooming glory and then only to
have them become root bound and overgrown because of again, all that growth,
they just put it into it. So what should you give your planners?
You talked about it. It's low and slow, and we're gonna get into
that. But what do you mean mean by low and slow. We'll get
to that after we take a very quick break. We'll be back to talk
about how to feed them, the duration you should feed your plants, and
then also more importantly, how to minimize the nutrients you're giving them so they
don't grow too big, too fast. Okay, we are back and before
the break we talked about the importance of fertilizing and hanging baskets low and slow.
But you know what do you fertilize with to do that? For us,
we really use a one two fertilizing punch, and I mean it's worked
for us. Mary, I'll tell you what. We started probably doing this
I don't know eight nine years ago and fell in love with it because it
is a low and slow, but a consistent feeding that doesn't overpower plants we
talked about to make them go root bound, but at the same time it
provides them just this perfect amount of nutrients to keep those blooms coming on.
Exactly what we call is the one two punch. It's actually a combination of
two different types of fertilizers that really makes those hanging baskets look gorgeous. They
are. And so when she says two types, what she's talking about is
one is a dry approach and for us we use worm castings. They're they're
fantastic. And then the other is a liquid fertilizer and liquid fertilizers are gonna
be a little bit more effective, providing a faster energy boost to your plants.
They can still be low and slow depending on what you use. But
you know, liquid absorbs through the folier action the leaves, and it also
absorbs to the roots where the granular action, the dry action we talk about,
absorbs only through the roots. So what we do we use worm casting
surprise. Yeah, they're just fantastic. And the reason we like worm castings
for our hanging baskets is they won't overpower. They don't provide too much nitrogen,
which nitrogen is just gonna promote growth. It's not going to help you
with this blooms as much. But worm castings are fantastic. However, if
you don't have worm castings or don't want to use worm castings or purchase them,
you can use a granular fertilizer and all purpose. But again, you
want to make it low. It's got to be like a neutral five five
five, a low base. You don't want the nitrogen number to be too
high. Before we get learning further gent, let's talk about what the five
five five means. Yeah, so five five five good call americ because sometimes
I just get so excited to start talking. So we're talking about you know,
the mp K, which is you know, nitrogen, phosphorus, and
potassium. So of those three numbers, that's what most fertilizers are made up
the majority of They have a lot of other trace nutrients, but the nitrogen
in that number is for greening up, okay, greening and growth. When
you think nitrogen, think of lawns. Lawn fertilizers use like thirty six and
then two two in their NPK makeup because they want to put a lot of
green growth. So nitrogen important. It's good, but too much of it
promotes too much growth in the roots and we'll green your plan up, but
you won't have a lot of blooms. So what we're talking about with five
five five, it's it's just five percent, five percent and five percent.
It's not a genormous amount. I love that in term, but going back
to my elf dates there, but it's just going to give them a low
and slow every month. But for us it's worm castings. I mean,
you don't have to worry about these numbers. They're very low on all of
those, but they just provide a nice, steady approach every time you water
those worm castings, they soak down in exactly, So how much should you
use per hanging basket? You know what, that's a great question that a
lot of people always want to know. So for us, we use a
quarter to a half a cup of castings on the soil surface once a month.
Is that for a sixty inch basket ten or twelve size? Matter?
Yeah, I mean we do a sixteen inch basket, So I would say
we lean towards the half a cup. It's really about your plan. I
mean I like that. You know, if it's a smaller basket, I
would go a little bit smaller, maybe a quarter cup. It's again,
we always talked about this all the time. Don't get so caught up in
that perfection. It's about providing them a set amount of nutrients. So somewhere
between a quarter and a half cup. I would say a half cup for
a sixteen to an eighteen inch basket. But work it in a bit.
This is something you do, you know, put it on the top of
your soil. You can just use a screwdriver or anything, just kind of
scratch it in that surface soil just helps it kind of get set. And
then when you start to water or if rains, if your baskets are out
working rain, they're gonna go in. I mean, that's the big thing
about worm casting, that's that slow power that goes in. I mean,
they're incredible. We use them everywhere and every extra bit of power they give
to baskets and even on our containers. We do the same thing with our
container plants. It really is amazing and you can see the difference. And
I know we get this question a lot also, jem is you know,
can I put the worm castings too close to the stem of the plants?
No, not with worm castings. You can with granular fertilizer. But worm
castings are not going to burn anything. That's what makes them so wonderful.
Again, we'll have a link. We've had it on a link on most
of our sites. You know what's funny, we don't even we have no
affiliation with worm castings. I'm just telling you they work. They work for
us everywhere, and when it comes to containers and baskets, they really do.
So that's the first part of the one two punch. The second part
of that punch is liquid fertilizing, and we talked about it. Liquid fertilizing.
You know, it's it's amazing because it's going to give a boost of
nutrients. And for this fertilizer, you know, we talked about the NPK
ratios nitrogen, the phosphorus and the potassium, but this is the one that
you're going to give your plants that has very little nitrogen and it's going to
boost it a lot more in the phosphorus and the potassium to promote blooms.
And you're talking about commercial liquid fertilizers or like one compost T, worm casting
T what it. Yeah, So if you're going all organic, and I
mean you can still get organic liquid fertilizers too. Worm casting T and composting
T are two of our favorites. You know, you don't have to worry
once again about the NPK. They're gonna power your plants, they're gonna power
blooms. You're not gonna have an issue. But if you're buying a commercial
product, even if it's organic, whatever it is, don't get one a
liquid fertilizer that has a higher nitrogen number than your phosphorus or you know,
or your potassium, because those are what's responsible for blooms. And you want
to higher number there. So for us we fertilize you know, whether we're
using compost T worm casting T it's a little bit different. You know,
it's once a month for every for the dry materials the worm casting. But
for us with the liquid fertilizer, we like to do it, you know,
every seven to ten days, right. And when we talk about using
the liquid fertilizers, you know sometimes the commercial bought ones, you don't want
to use them at full strength. No, no, So when you're using
worm casting tea or compost t make your tea, put it on every seven
to ten days in addition to those worm castings, and you're going to be
fantastic. But if you're using a commercial product where those numbers are higher,
you know, for instance, Easy Grow liquid concentrate, which we like.
It's it's a great it's a great natural way to do it. But it's
a ten thirty twenty So you're talking about ten parts nitrogen, thirty parts phosphorus,
and twenty parts potassium. That's strong. If you give your plants that
at full strength every seven to ten days, you're gonna end up at the
same problem. They're going to be root bound. They might have a big
blast of blooms, but they're not lasting all season. So what we always
recommend, Mary, is if you're using commercial fertilizers and not compost t or
worm casting tea dilute, that that's a huge key to keeping your flowers looking
great. You do. We're all talking about low and slow fertilizing, you
know, we want those baskets to last all summer long, So you really
have to take a low and slow approach with both the worm castings and the
liquid fertilizer. Yeah, and if you're if it's if you see your plants
are overgrowing too much, cut it back to a third. You know,
it's a good rule of thumb. If you're looking at your plants and they're
blooming great, and they're green, and they don't show any signs of wear
and tear, you don't have to give them too much. You know,
keep keep up your regiment, even back off a little if you think it's
growing too much. I really really prefer compost t as as my actual liquid
fertilizer. I think you do too. I think it's just the no danger
zone. You're never going to over your power plants. You're you're not going
to overpower your plants too much. But that to be said, sometimes you
can't get composted to or you can't make it, or you don't have compostor
you can't purchase compost. And that's where a good organic liquid fertilizer can help.
But just don't put it on at full strength. You read some of
those labels and they will tell you. You know, it's a pretty strong
dose, right. You know, when you go to purchase these, if
you are purchasing commercial liquid fertilizers, there are the numbers will be there.
The NPK numbers will be on the package, So take a peek at that
before you just pick up the cheapest one on the shelf or the most expensive
one on the shelf, thinking your flowers are gonna be great. Yeah.
We talked about the Easy Grow which is a ten thirty twenty and it's fantastic
and you can dilute that and it's going to be great. But there are
some out there. I'm one of my favorites is Doctor Earth. They have
a button Bloom fertilizer and here's a great one. It's a one to one
MPK you're talking compost t range. You can use that full strength every seven
to ten days and it's gonna do wonders. But when it comes to fertilizing
hanging basketball, I just can't stress this enough that one two approach, having
some worm castings or a granular fertilizer once a month to do the topical approach
and then seven to ten to fourteen days with your liquid and at a reduced
rate, or you're using a compost t or a worm caste that is already
reduced. That is the key. I mean, we have this goes on
all summer long. It does, and we have done this I don't know
since any of time for us, and it just people always ask us come
August, oh my gosh, how do you keep your baskets looking so great?
And it's not us, it's just that fact that we've not overpowered them.
We've purchased smaller baskets in the beginning. Even if you plant your own
baskets, don't fill it so much with plants. Allow them time to grow,
because then you get late in the season and they just look so much
more. Promise they'll grow even if you plant just a few plants in there
and they'll be by the end of summer, they'll be huge. That's right.
So let's just kind of wrap this up. I think we've hammered home
the fertilizing. You know, you start with bigger containers. Don't buy overly
large plants. I mean, that's a big key, more than anything else,
to getting into last all season. And then you fertilize regularly but with
a light feeding. Yeah, it keeps plants blooming but not overgrowing. I
mean, you use a fertilizer with a bit more phosphorus and nitrogen when you're
getting into your liquids. And my favorite as you use wormcastings once a month.
They work. Yeah, and then last but not least. I just
I just want to throw this in there. So let's say you get to
right now or July, I August. We're sitting in mid June, right
now here as we do this podcast. But if you get to that point
and you realize your basket is overgrown, I mean you're pouring water on and
it's pouring. Yeah, but don't throw that plant away and don't put it
in the compass pole. A great thing you can do. Okay, yes,
you can replant it. Replant it in a basket. That's probably you
know. Thirty three to fifty percent bigger, so you can make it last
a year. But sometimes you already have a big basket and you're like,
I can't find a container this big. Don't throw it away. Take it
out into a flower bed somewhere, dig down and plan it like an annual
plant, and fertilize a little bit. You will be amazed. We've done
this with petunia plants, marigold plants that have gotten overly large. Within weeks
they will be the biggest showstopper and your flower beds around. Yeah, they're
absolutely beautiful. It's a great way to repurpose the hanging baskets that they're just
totally overgrown. It really is. So we probably beat fertilizing into the ground
here, get it. But anyway, I think it's time Mary and remember
or whatever you do, find the fun and gardening and gross uply beautiful.
All right, until next week, everyone, happy gardening. We hope you've
enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to the Simple Garden podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, or most of your favorite podcast apps. You can also head
over to simplegardenlife dot com, where you can listen and read all of the
show notes to every episode and if you have any questions, any ideas for
show topics, or if you want to share your favorite garden tip, email
us at the Farm at owgarden dot com. Until next time, Thanks everyone,