Brian Bauman grew up in the big blue house right as you enter the farm. Believe it or not, this is where he grew up. On the front patio, there was a hanging basket sitting out front that his mom kept yelling at him to fix. Here are some little tips and tricks on how to fix your hanging baskets at home.
If your hanging basket is not getting enough sun you can tell the foliage is starting to search and look for the sunlight. There’s not a lot of blossoms going on if it’s not doing well. There are a couple of different things you can do to bring it back to life.
Fertilize & Water
At the farm, we carry fertilizer that we use in all of our hanging baskets in the nursery. We’ve bagged it up for you to take home. All you’ve got to do is use it once a week. You could do it every Sunday afternoon or at the farm, we do it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. You can do it up to three times a week but it’s good to alternate between fertilizing and fresh water. This gives them a break in between. All it takes is one tablespoon of fertilizer which you drop in a two-gallon watering can. It’s one tablespoon per gallon of water but we’re going to put two heaping ones to give them an extra boost. It’s good to mix it up in there and make sure the water dissolves. In the past when we’ve talked about watering a lot of times we tell you to water until the water comes pouring out the bottom, but when we water with fertilizer we want to give it a nice drink. We don’t want the water to come gushing out of the bottom because then you’re spilling your fertilizer all over the ground. So you want to give it a nice drink until the water is starting to come out the bottom. This is the perfect fertilizing your hanging baskets needs at least once a week.
Trim the Hanging Basket
Here is the hard part for some people, but it is always easier for a plant to grow new growth than it is to fix the old growth. We need to take a pair of scissors and give your basket a haircut. This makes your basket so much better. You give all the stragglers a nice trim all the way around. We’ll continue until you get the shape you want out of the basket. Then with that fertilizer we’re going to get extra growth.
Watch Out for Bugs
There’s a lot of different problems that can start coming around with the summer heat. You need to watch out for bug problems. One of the things you want to look for bugs in your hanging petunia baskets is little bites out of the blossoms. The blossoms themselves look like something’s kind of taking a bite right out of them. They especially like the little new buds and believe it or not it’s these little kinds of creepy-crawly worms. When they start eating the blossoms they almost change the exact color of the blossoms. It’s really hard to see a lot of times. Customers come in and say there are no bugs in my basket. If you look you’re not going to see them, what you will see are those little bites out of the blossoms.
So there are two things you can do when that happens. First, use Captain Jacks and we love this stuff. It is actually a bacteria that they found in a rum distillery in the Caribbean and when the bugs eat that bacteria and the bacteria takes care of them from the inside out. They deserve every bit of it so all you do is give it a shake, then just mist down the basket really good. It’s completely safe for all of your pets and everything is organic. We like to do this right about the middle of July. That’s when you’ll first start seeing them come out. It’s good to do this once a week for a couple of weeks just to make sure it will take care of it.
If your basket has holes all over it and there are tons of worms a lot of times we pick up something stronger called Eight. This is more of what they call a contact spray so when the spray actually hits the bugs, they are zip, zero, gone. We like to do this late at night, around dusk, when all the bees and everything else is gone. The only thing that is going to come in contact with this are those nasty little worms. If you have a lot of problems this is the way to go. Spraying it down we take care of any bugs. If your basket is not getting enough sunlight so we’re going to take it down and move it to give it some really good sunshine. A lot of times in a porch area in the back, it will have no flowers. In the front, there are a few more people who like to twist and turn them. What happens when you do that is you end up with the whole thing not looking good. It’s better to pull it down and you can set it on a bucket or a plant stand in your yard for a week or two. Let it flush back out be nice and full. Then hang it back up. That’s the best way to go.
You want to find sunshine in the right perfect spot. You are welcome to come out and see our hanging baskets on the farm. You’ll see how we’ve got them all trimmed up, sprayed, and fertilized. Then we are set for those long summer nights with baskets that are going to be gorgeous.
Watch as Brian Bauman from Bauman’s Farm & Garden talks about how to rejuvenate your hanging baskets.
