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Hanging Baskets - passive hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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I'm your host Dr Russell Sharp and today we're going up, literally.
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Up into the sky. We're talking about hanging baskets.
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These flowering orbs of colour that lie on our porches, lampposts, high streets.
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But beyond the aesthetics, hanging baskets are a fascinating horticultural challenge
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and in many ways they function just like simplified hydroponic systems.
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Today we'll cover watering, grow media, plant choice and design from tomatoes
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to trailing petunias we'll cover the lot.
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So the reason I have decided to do an episode about hanging baskets is because
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I am planning next year to grow hanging baskets for my son's school to raise funds for.
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So I thought it'd be a great way of everyone in my village signing up to buy
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a hanging basket that has been grown by the kids or certainly put together by
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the kids so I've been looking into buying the plants buying the grow media buying
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the brackets buying the baskets themselves,
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and look at the different options and things like that and it's actually could
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be a really good money spinner for that
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particular charity the school parents and teachers association and because you
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look at the prices it's like 20p for a trailing tomato plant 10p for a petunia
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and even the most expensive one is like 50p for a strawberry plant so we've got loads of old like.
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30 litre buckets as well in the grow room which are just piling up outside in
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the in the side of the factory and i think they could make good planters as
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well so we're going to do planters and hanging baskets i think this is going
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to be a really good money spinner so i've been looking into hanging baskets.
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I've done hanging baskets before so I've put together all the information on
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hanging baskets into one episode and hopefully if you're looking to raise money
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for a charity or you think you could start a business doing hanging baskets
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then this is the podcast episode for you.
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A lot of ornamental nurseries do hanging baskets because it allows you to tear.
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Production. So you can have multi-tiers, a bit like a vertical farm in your
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greenhouse. You can have bedding plants at the bottom and hanging baskets up in the rafters.
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So hanging baskets are essentially a suspended, soilless or low volume root
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zone, very low volume roots and that's the key thing.
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So they can be peat based, traditionally they're peat based,
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but now more coir based growing media with controlled release fertilizers often used.
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But the grower is responsible for the water supply most of
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the time so you do see automated irrigation
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but you very rarely see fertigation and so
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you'll certainly be responsible for making sure they've got adequate
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nutrients and also you'll be responsible for pest control as well and they are
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open in the environment outside so this is like cocoa based hydroponics but
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outside so you get all the pest and disease that come with that because they're
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suspended in the air the baskets dry out really quickly they're exposed to a
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lot more wind than say a planter down on the ground,
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and they're isolated from the soil food web meaning that you
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must provide the plant with everything they need just like in hydroponics
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so the key thing with how if i
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could give any advice for hanging baskets once
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they start to grow you have to water them every single
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day even if it's rained that day because even
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if it's rained the amount of water that gets into a hanging basket is minimal
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so and often the outsides of the actual basket
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itself is permeable and so water evaporates
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from that so you have a massive water demand so at least once a
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day and that's why hanging baskets they've got automated irrigation
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thrive really well because they are getting the amount of water they need so
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never rely on that certainly water every day or every 48 hours what plants work
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best well let's break down the most popular choices petunias are the number
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one i'd say trailing Petunias, upright Petunias.
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Calibrocchia is another one. They are good because they have long-lasting,
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vibrant flowers and compact,
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Petunias I think are in the same, they're in the nightshade families,
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the same as tomatoes and peppers.
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Lobelia, bacopa, ivor-leaf geraniums, very popular ivor-leaf geraniums.
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I like the standard geraniums though, but the ivor-leaf ones,
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they're more trailing, so they give a great edge and cascade.
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Interesting fact, if you rub the leaf of a geranium, that is what the ozone
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layer smells of. It smells of geraniums because ozone smells of geraniums.
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You can do herbs in a hanging basket.
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Thyme mint parsley they all thrive in hanging
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baskets and then the edible ones you can
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get strawberries and determinate trailing tomatoes
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now they don't look as good they're not as impactful but
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they still look pretty good and people will still be impressed if they come around your
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house and they see hanging baskets full of tomatoes they
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might take one or two if you've got an amazon delivery driver be nice
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to give him or her a tomato and let
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them help themselves the and that's
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one of the reasons hanging baskets work really well is because they have massive impact
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at the front of your house or wherever you're locating them they're
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at eye level just like when you go to a supermarket they put the most expensive
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things they want you to buy with the highest margins eye level
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or you go to a grow shop they do the same and the same with their plants you
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put your best display at eye level so that's why hanging baskets do so well
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you can also attach them to the side of your house that's like baskets on the
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side of your house very important you don't just put soil in there because soil
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weighs a lot more than a cocoa based or a peat-based growing media.
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That's one of the reasons we use those growing media rather than soil-based growing media.
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My sister, she is an actual, I'm a plant doctor.
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My sister's an actual human doctor, a GP, a family doctor, and she didn't realise this.
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And she had a massive basket attached to the side of her house.
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She filled it with soil and it promptly fell off. And I think it damaged some brickwork.
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So shout out to my sister in Warrington. She might know humans,
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but she doesn't know plants. So it's...
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I know I've made a lot of boo-boos when it comes to human biology,
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though, so I can appreciate that. We've both got our specialities.
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You really want compact growth, high flower-to-leaf ratio, and ideally a self-branching habit.
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That's what the species we go for, and that's what the most popular ones are.
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So you'll find that the main companies like Bull, Colgrave, and other breeders.
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They will breed for dwarf-trailing cultivars of certain plants.
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And cherry tomatoes obviously people want cherry
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tomatoes you pick them straight off when you think about the hanging basket
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you don't want a big beefsteak tomato that you're gonna have to then
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go and cut up you want to be able to just take a cherry tomato and eat
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it and they as i said they grow to determinate varieties
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these are the ones that get to a certain height
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and then branch and branch again rather than
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you actually just growing for as one stem
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can't grow for 10 meters like it
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can in a greenhouse tomato variety they're the indeterminate varieties
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you'd have to pinch these out they just grow to the right
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size so they make great options for hanging
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baskets don't make great options if you're growing commercially in the greenhouse but
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they do make great options there obviously if you're growing outside white
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fly will be an aphid you've really got to keep hold of them if you're
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growing a petunia or a tomato because they love anything in
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that family you can get so the liner is
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very important because that will determine both the
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look of the growing of the hanging basket and its
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properties so traditionally sphagnum moss
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was used but it's while it's
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aesthetic and looks good it can dry out fast it
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loses water and also it's unsustainably harvested from places like canada and
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the falkland isles and places like that and ireland if you go back and look
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at my listen to my episode about prisoners growing moss hydroponically then
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and that would be, that goes into more detail about that.
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You can get cocoa fiber liners, different type of cocoa fiber than the actual grow media.
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They're much more popular nowadays. They're classic, biodegradable,
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good drainage, because that's the other point.
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You just don't want to have it like a unsealed like plastic container with no holes in because,
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you'll get waterlogging. You can use felt or plastic, like a fabric that is
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made of plastic, like a felt or a biodegradable felt.
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They retain moisture better, especially in hotter climates, so look around for there.
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And you can get more ornate, customisable, ornamental, colourful baskets as well.
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So the basket material might vary. The wires that the basket's on are normally
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like the chain links and you want to have a bracket for your wall that can hold
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that basket when it's fully mature with all the plants in it and fully watered.
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I've had a few in the past where they've just bent over and the brackets that
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go onto the wall just sort of give way.
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And your brickwork has to be up to the standards where it can withhold a hanging basket as well.
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Otherwise you might want to use a pole. You can get pole-based hanging baskets and look at those.
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They're very common in high streets the growing
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media just like hydroponics really use a light well
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aerated compost and with lots of added perlite or
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vermiculite is very common just because you want
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to reduce the amount of weight that's going on that bracket and
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improve the plant grow if they like nice light growing media use
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a slow release fertilizer or controlled release or a
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fertilizer that you know you can put in every week so liquid
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gold as it's called in the uk or gold leaf in
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the us that's a perfectly great fertilizer for hanging
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baskets they will grow like stink if you use that
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but make sure you use it every week because it will be used
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up by the plants you can add things like hydrogels to
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retain moisture but they'll add to the weight and they're
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sort of counterproductive they do the opposite to perlite
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i just wouldn't add any perlite if you wanted to increase your weight your water
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holding capacity and wetting agents things like polyacrylamide they're a plastic
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microplastic going into your soil it's not great is it so i would i would i
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myself would use one of our fertilizers our mpk fertilizers rather than a,
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controlled relief fertilizer that's
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got plastic in it plastic resins or a polyacrylamide that contains plastic.
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Really look at installing a drip irrigation system with a timer.
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That will save you a lot of time over the years, especially in sunny conditions.
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In summer, you really want to be doing twice a day. It's not unusual.
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Wind dries out a basket fast and can damage the tender young plants.
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They swirl around the basket on the chains, and they can bash off and fall.
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So don't put them anywhere where they could fall on somebody.
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And especially not in windy conditions.
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Just getting a phone call, so I'll pause the podcast there.
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Oh, I'm out of breath now. That's me an hour later, after I've been drawn down
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to the factory to help with manufacturing issues. Anyway, where was I?
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Issues around hanging baskets. Rodents and pests. Because baskets are off the
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ground, they're less prone to attack from squirrels, slugs and mice, which is great.
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Especially here in the UK, where slugs are the number one pests of gardens.
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Another important consideration for hanging baskets is they're a great option in the winter.
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You can use hardy evergreens like heucheras ivy
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or dwarf conifers even and switch to slow growing
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cold tolerant species cut irrigation in these
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cold winter months because you're not going to need to water them every
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day okay and then as i've said position them
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for impact eye level for interaction group baskets in
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triangles or vertical layers for depth as well
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rather than just one big clump and ensure
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they get plenty of light if you grow them in a shaded
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area they will not flower as much so i've
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grown i've got a really big conservatory like
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greenhouse on the side of my house and it's very shaded and i've tried growing
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hanging baskets in there and the petunias just didn't flower so they do have
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to be lots of sun to get lots of flowers on them and also if you grow plants
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in shade they're more they're more susceptible to aphids so you get a.
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We've talked about drippers. Monitor your EC of your runoff.
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You do want some runoff. You want them to drip.
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If you're not watering to the point where they're dripping, then you're not
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watering a hanging basket correctly.
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You do need some runoff and monitor the EC and the pH of that runoff.
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For every five litres of growing media, you want two to three small flowering
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plants on a flowering hanging basket.
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So if you double that up to a 20 litre hanging basket,
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a really big one, then you're going to want around two
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times four is eight or twelve eight
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to twelve small flowering plants that math
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took me way too longer than it should have you can tell it's
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been a long day for edible plants like strawberries and
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tomatoes you probably just want one main plant per five
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liters so but you could go for in
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strawberries you could go for a couple of varieties a dune bearing and
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ever bearing we don't know what they are we can do an
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episode on strawberries couldn't we that'd be good overplanting looks
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lush in the short term but leads to root compaction and it
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just looks like a mess of different species the best hanging baskets i think
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are when it's just one variety and like a big yellow blob of color i think they
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look really good especially if they're repeated again and again down a high
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street they you know that looks good there's a village near my dad's which does
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that and it's what's it called.
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Eccles Hall or Eccleshall and they they
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always have like pinks and reds and just two two different varieties of ornamental
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plant and they're repeated all the way down the high street or main street if
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you're in America and that looks really good so I do recommend that so there
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you go hanging baskets might just seem like ornamental but follow those simple
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rules and you could have a really.
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Thriving money-making exercise if you grew hanging
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baskets using hydroponic principles either use
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that money for charity or for your own professional endeavors
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ventures i would keep it simple though don't
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over complicate it with loads of different species keep it keep it simple and
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then you're you're you you won't get
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into loads of different issues and actually your displays will look
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better so i've been dr russell sharp i
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still am dr russell sharp this has been hydroponics daily and
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it will be hydroponics daily again tomorrow i said we were
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going to do nitrogen today but i thought i'd do something interesting i'll
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i'll put off nitrogen tomorrow different forms of nitrogen and
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what else are we going to do got some really exciting episodes coming
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up so that should be fun we'll do one on calmag i did
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mention that we've we've launched a few new products and then i forgot to mention
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what they are at utreema one of them
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is a calmag product there's lots of products on the market that claim
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to be calmag the best calmag ever and i've
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always said you know we're not going to launch a calmag until we've
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got you know one that really is a step change and i
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just noticed that a lot of cal mags say oh low in
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nitrogen because you don't want vegetative growth and another and
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they say also that you know ones that say completely absent of nitrogen and
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then they're full of chlorine chlorides you know magnesium chloride and calcium
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chloride which are really bad for plants and like one of the really most popular
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ones in the uk now that's really taken off in the last few years it's full of
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chloride it's the cheapest.
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Crappiest form of kalmaggie can get so we've
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launched one that's free of chloride
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free of free of nitrogen uses organic
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acids to slate the calcium which is important so which
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i think it's really good it also used the same ph
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technology that's in liquid gold or gold leaf
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if you're in the us so you don't need to worry about ph correction
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and also it'll help with ph correction
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when you're using liquid gold or gold leaf especially in
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soft water where you want to add a bit more calmag and so
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in crops where extra calmag is always useful so we've added that
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to our lineup can be used in hydroponics horticulture
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sports turf even so check that out
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if you're interested go to utreema if you can't spell utreema it's latin for
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wasabi or it's actually ancient greek but you know scientific for wasabi and
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if you've got any thoughts on that any any feedback let me know and if you've
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got any ideas for episodes or subjects you think that i've missed and are really
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critical to hydroponics then i'd love to feature them i'd love to feature,
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companies that got novel and new ideas in hydroponics so
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please do get in touch and if you've liked this episode if
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you're a hanging basket aficionado or you know someone who is then please share
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this episode with them and it would mean a lot to me and if you've had this
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episode shared with you then you are that person a very cold drink so get down
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the pub and enjoy that it's thursday today but yeah it's near enough the weekend
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you go down the pub thanks very much for listening until tomorrow goodbye.