As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this? Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?

Dave

Keep looking. They will turn up.

The problem with most hanging baskets is that the pots dry out too quickly
and need to be watered every day to prevent the plants from wilting. Many
hanging basket plants, especially Petunias, will lose most of their foliage
during the hottest part of the summer and look ratty or even die off
completely. Professional landscapers usually replace their hanging plants
several time a year. That can be expensive and not practical for most
amateur gardeners.

There are some succulent plants that actually do best in hanging baskets but
that's another story.


"Dave Smith" wrote in message
...
As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this? Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?

Dave

Dave Smith wrote:
As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some
pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this?
Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?


In the summer, my backyard is full of hanging plants. I festoon an
apricot tree with orchids I had brought in for the winter. However,
the collection has grown, so I may have to plant another tree---or
build a frame to suspend the overflow.

J. Del Col

Dave Smith wrote:
As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some
pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this?
Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?


As a generality hanging baskets are high maintenance & temporary. They
often end up used more or less like bouquets, purchased in full glory as
prepared in hothouses where they were speed-grown, over-fertilized, &
trained, only to be shocked to find themselves outdoors dangling from some
purchaser's porch eaves baking in the sun, thus already failing a week
later, all too soon to be discarded.

Many of the plants chosen for baskets are annuals or tropicals furthering
the temporariness of what is little more than a bouquet. Sensitive
fuchsias rather than discarded can be given all the high-maintainence
attention they require in baskets, then as they fade, removed to be hidden
away when out of season, &amp not brought back into view until the
following spring. But unless deeply in love with fuchsias, this can seem
like too much specialized work, labor that doesn't benefit the garden at
large.

For just such reasons they are indeed slightly deplored by serious
gardeners & landscapers who want more-or-less permanent features, that
don't need to be watered twice a day, that won't get grubby-looking at
high summer & vanish utterly in winter. A hanging basket in winter is
either a blank or an eyesoar & would not be highlighted in winter issues
of gardening magazines.

A lot of hanging baskets are frankly tacky -- plastic, two predictable
wood designs, or cheap metal frames with pete mats to hold in some dirt --
& it's just not easy to find good ones that are at least inoffensive. In
some quarters, every house needs a mezuzah, but the ones down at the
dimestore are all made out of molded plastic & look like crap, while the
"fancier" ones are just kitsch objects, hardly reminiscent of anything
sacred. So too hanging baskets, 99 out of 100 of them are so shitty it's
just pathetic that people keep hanging them from the eaves.

They are too often used to "tart up" the tin porches of trailer houses,
while at the "high end" they are associated with lamp-post decorations in
would-be tourist traps & are the outdoor equivalent of ferns in taverns
attempting against all odds to pass themselves off as more than sleezy
bars.

There is also the pathos factor of windowboxes & hanging baskets used by
people who want to garden but have no place to do so, or are trying to
disguise the ugliness of a house with a few failing petunias. All too
often a hanging basket is not much higher up the ladder of taste than a
christmas wreathe of pinecones glue-gunned on a circle of cardboard, or a
raised garden made inside a tractor tire. There is a bigger overlap
between vendors of christmas gimcrack & hanging baskets, than between
hanging baskets & nurseries. And those standard-issue hanging baskets of
puffy-annuals fall into a category slimilar to mums sold in hospital gift
shops in pots wrapped in shiny metallic paper.

But there certainly are exceptions, & like even the kitchiest things, it
can be done with elegance & beauty. Container gardening is an art unto
itself & hanging baskets a sub-specialty of a sub-specialty. Hanging
baskets in a warm zone with orchid cacti or dangling beed-plant
succulents, or a temperate hanging basket with variegated Vinca major or
Appleberry vines or ornate dwarf ivy in the mix, can in some cases require
no more maintenance than any other garden component, & can even have a
degree of permanency rather than just be throw-away flowers.

-paghat the ratgirl
--
Get your Paghat the Ratgirl T-Shirt he
http://www.paghat.com/giftshop.html
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government." -Thomas Jefferson

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 22:03:48 -0800, Dave Smith
wrote:

As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this? Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?

Dave

I have a night-blooming cereus in a hanging pot under the deck. It is
7-8 feet across, about 17 years old, looks gangly, but really puts on
a show when it goes into bloom. The plant is so heavy, it is hung on
three chains. It is wintering over in my woodshop until spring
arrives. I've always wanted a staghorn fern. What looks bad is a
hanging pot with a dead or no plant.

"Dave Smith" wrote in message
...
As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this? Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?



Maybe it is the type yards you are looking at?
I know that in my tropical backyard (and those of all my gardening friends)
there are umpteen hanging baskets containing rhipsalis, orchids, and many
other epiphytic plants. Most of them are the slatted wooden baskets
scattered in among the trees in the dapled light.

Or were you referring more to the plastic pots of petunias?
Too much maintenance!


Toni Carroll
South Florida USA
Zone 10- hot and sunny today

wrote:
Dave Smith wrote:

As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some

pretty

amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this?

Is

it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?



In the summer, my backyard is full of hanging plants. I festoon an
apricot tree with orchids I had brought in for the winter. However,
the collection has grown, so I may have to plant another tree---or
build a frame to suspend the overflow.

J. Del Col



I have at least two dozen hanging baskets in my back yard
every summer and usually about a dozen in the front yard.
They are a bit of a pain to keep watered during very hot
weather (they often need to be watered twice a day) but I
think they are worth the trouble. I have some picture of
them on my web site: http://members.iglou.com/brosen/index.html
--
Bill R. (Ohio Valley, U.S.A)

Digital Camera: HP PhotoSmart 850

For pictures of my garden flowers visit
http://members.iglou.com/brosen

Remove NO_WEEDS_ in e-mail address to reply by e-mail

I use automatic watering timers to solve the watering problem.

Have Fun

Jim
"Dave Smith" wrote in message
...
As I'm thumbing through the home and garden magazines I see some pretty
amazing back yards, but I don't see any hanging plants. Why is this? Is
it a no-no once you get serious about the back yard?

Dave

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 06:36:47 GMT, "Cereus-validus....."
wrote:

Keep looking. They will turn up.

The problem with most hanging baskets is that the pots dry out too quickly
and need to be watered every day to prevent the plants from wilting. Many
hanging basket plants, especially Petunias, will lose most of their foliage
during the hottest part of the summer and look ratty or even die off
completely. Professional landscapers usually replace their hanging plants
several time a year. That can be expensive and not practical for most
amateur gardeners.

There are some succulent plants that actually do best in hanging baskets but
that's another story.


Excellent advice. when I first started gardening I put impatiens in
hanging baskets in zone 9 in full sun and couldn't figure out why I
had to water at least twice a day.

Wow, I am very impressed. I have a small night -blooming cereusin a 4" pot.
It has never done well. Last summer I was told it shouldn't be in soil but
bark chips like an orchid. Still it has hardly grown. Can you give me some
tips on how I can help this plant do better? I would very much appreciate
it.
Bonnie in NJ

"Phisherman" wrote in message
...

I have a night-blooming cereus in a hanging pot under the deck. It is
7-8 feet across, about 17 years old, looks gangly, but really puts on
a show when it goes into bloom.

"Bonnie Jean" wrote in message
...
Wow, I am very impressed. I have a small night -blooming cereusin a 4"
pot.
It has never done well. Last summer I was told it shouldn't be in soil but
bark chips like an orchid. Still it has hardly grown. Can you give me some
tips on how I can help this plant do better? I would very much appreciate
it.


I have a similar sized one grown from a cutting from a plant my Mom has had
for decades. It lives outside year round in Zone 10 in a well draining soil.
I keep it in bright light with maybe 5% sun and water it whenever I walk by
with a hose. I do feed pretty regularly but other than that it seems to
thrive on benign neglect.

Toni Carroll
South Florida USA
Zone 10

I give my cereus care similar to that needed by a Christmas cactus.
Transplant it every 5 years with standard potting mix, fast drainage,
filtered sun. I feed it diluted fish emulsion during the growing
season (spring to late summer), but otherwise no special care. I hang
it under the deck where it gets brief morning sun. I bring it indoors
when temperatures fall below 40. It is neglected during the winter,
perhaps watering once a month. At about 8 years after starting the
plant from a slip, it bloomed. The slip was taken from a friend in
Hollywood CA, where it was growing outdoors year round. I'm in E.TN,
zone 7.

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 07:25:53 -0500, "Bonnie Jean"
wrote:

Wow, I am very impressed. I have a small night -blooming cereusin a 4" pot.
It has never done well. Last summer I was told it shouldn't be in soil but
bark chips like an orchid. Still it has hardly grown. Can you give me some
tips on how I can help this plant do better? I would very much appreciate
it.
Bonnie in NJ

"Phisherman" wrote in message
.. .

I have a night-blooming cereus in a hanging pot under the deck. It is
7-8 feet across, about 17 years old, looks gangly, but really puts on
a show when it goes into bloom.