Hanging baskets

Hanging baskets need quite a lot of water to be healthy and blooming. During cooler months, the water needs decrease, but during summer the water needs are quite serious. During warm weather, it's important to water your hanging baskets daily. When you're watering hanging baskets, it's important to completely saturate the soil as some water will spill at the bottom of the pot. 

By lifting the hanging basket on the bottom of the pot, you can feel the weight: if it's easy to lift, your plants need more water. If it's a bit heavier, the soil is probably still moist. 

To make the watering a bit easier, you could take the basket off its hook, so the water doesn't spill all around. 

If you've got some stunning hanging baskets, you obviously want to keep them looking good all summer. All your hanging basket needs to be healthy and blooming is a slow and steady diet of nutrients. With a lack of nutrients, there won't be enough energy to bloom. With too many nutrients, all of the energy will go to growing roots and foliage. It's the right balance that makes your plants bloom all summer long. 

You can choose to either fertilize once a week or even daily at half strength. 

Sometimes it's beneficial to trim your hanging baskets. As some stems may grow higher than others, they can put other stems around in their shadow.

To maintain an evenly full and flourishing hanging basket, you can trim the fastest growing stems weekly. 

Besides that, it's essential that the plants energy goes to blooming flowers, and not to the ones that already faded out of bloom. Deadheading your plants weekly might even be rewarded with a beautiful second bloom (this goes for Phlox, Delphinium, Sage, Salvia, Coneflower and others)! Deadheading is simple: pinch or cut off the flower stem below the spent flower and just above the first healthy leaves.