Five Easy Ways to Make an Eco-friendly Hanging Basket
A hanging basket for flowers or vegetables can be expensive at the shops but you can so easily make a delightful basket at home at no cost for a natural garden, using organic principles and recycled materials. What's more, do it this way and the basket will water itself!
Minimal watering means less work. Plus you can be sure that your valuable transplants won't perish in a hot season. Forget about water-absorbent beads. Here's a way to construct a hanging eco-basket free of charge and fast.
If you can't obtain a wicker basket, take any discarded pot that you can disguise in decorative cloth. If necessary, keep in the compost by laying old nylon socks around the inside. They never rot. You might also use lawn moss or large leaves like rhubarb or comfrey. Even old tea bags.
Make your basket self-sufficient in water
Here's a tip! Build in a water reservoir. Take a little robust polythene bag, the sort that doesn't rot. Pack it with some durable absorbent substance. Hydroleca or perlite are perfect. True, they're costly but you can sterilise them after use with hot water and re-use them indefinitely.
Another absorbent substance is barbecue charcoal. It has the extra virtue that it sweetens the soil. Later, you can wash it, dry it and recycle it on your barbie!
Put your plastic water pot in the hanging basket, but leave ample room at the top, sides and base for compost. Top up the bag with water. Put a deep layer of compost above it.
Set your plants in the top of the basket so that, as they grow, their roots will grow into the watering pot. Moisten the compost lavishly.
You can now go on vacation for a fortnight. Your basket will do fine.
Use the bottom and sides of the basket as well
It's very easy to customise that basket - and irrigation device - to grow plants out of the sides and base of the basket too. But for this, we need a stiffer container than a plastic bag.
Cut down a plastic milk or cola bottle to make a one pint pot. Put in charcoal again or any sterile absorbent substance that's not heavy. You can even use loft insulation matting. Now poke openings in the sides and base of the basket for the transplants.
How do you water those transplants? Here's another tip: lead a few capillary strips from the water reservoir before you surround it with compost.
Two more gardening tips: Never purchase capillary ribbons or mats! Simply use bootlaces or strips of window sash, or cut strips from a nylon sock or stocking and twist them. They'll convey water. Just don't use a fibre like cotton that will rot.
Twirl those strips about the roots of the transplants. Fill the inner pot with water and drench the whole basket as well. Every plant will then receive ample water over the season. Unless the weather's very hot, the eco-basket should need watering only every week.
Where can you get a no cost hanging basket?
You can grow a lot of flowers - and salads - in a big hanging eco-basket. A good tip is to get a used two gallon plastic tub. Restaurants and builders can offer you plenty of these, free.
Make sure they once contained food items or something equally innocuous - but watch out for chemicals! Perforate every side copiously.
These tubs often come with their own helpful handles but you can easily suspend it with cord or wire. Camouflage the barrel with a strip of earth-coloured carpet or other decorative fabric.
One more idea to get a free basket is those large nylon net bags typically used to sell fruit or potatoes. Look for a discarded fisherman's net next time you're at a beach, and it will look highly decorative too.
Needless to say, there's no need to grow just flowers in a hanging basket. Cherry tomatoes are a natural. You can even grow them upside down!
Upside down tomatoes? It's a very clever idea because you have two places to grow - top and bottom. Push your tomato transplant through the bottom of the basket and wedge it firmly so it won't tumble out under its heavy crop. Then grow salad crops on top of the basket and all around it.
Make your hanging baskets this way and your watering chores are over. Of course, that's a boon if you've suspended those baskets high overhead. Whenever you see people purchasing baskets, whisper to them 'plastic milk bottles and pantihose'. They might think you're crazy, but you'll know better!
About the Author
Dr John Yeoman PhD is director of the information network for natural gardening ideas, the Gardening Guild. Enjoy a wealth of ingenious plans to grow more food in your garden with less cost and work in his practical manual Lazy Secrets for Natural Gardening Success. Get it entirely free at: http://www.gardeningguild.org/lazy
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