2 posts tagged “garden”
Items required for this project: wire basket, bucket, water, sphagnum moss, potting soil, flowers, willingness to get dirty!
Step one: procure ingredients. If buying from a good nursery, ask for advice on what flowers to purchase for your particular hanging location, if your basket will be hanging in full sun you'll need different flowers than if your basket will be hanging in a nice shady spot.
The process: begin by soaking your moss in a bucket of water. Once thoroughly softened shape moss one handful at a time into hamburger sized patties. Begin lining your wire basket with these patties, making sure not to leave any holes. (You should think of the moss as a living pot for your flowers!) Once you have lined your basket about 1/3 of the way up stop. Your lining should resemble a birds nest at this point. You will want to fill this "nest" with potting soil. Next, gently feed one of your flowers through to the outside of the basket making sure that the roots are in contact with the soil. Note: I used three flowers spaced evenly apart at this level.
Continue lining your basket with moss patties and cover the first layer of flower roots with more soil. At about 2/3 the way up your basket repeat the previous steps adding more flowers to the basket.
You will want to continue lining the basket with moss above the top rim of the basket. Continue filling the interior with potting soil and then plant the top of the basket vertically with more flowers. Creeping flowers and vines can be especially nice for this top location.
Your last step is to securely fasten hanging wires to the basket. After that you'll want to water it slowly and hang it somewhere you will be able to enjoy it. In hotter months these baskets may require a lot of watering, if you water your baskets slowly, rather than quickly, the moss will be able to better absorb and retain the moisture so don't forget to be patient!
A lot of my friends keep gardens and grow their own vegetables and I've always been jealous so this year I decided to try growing my own vegetables too. This was all an experiment for me and I've been quite pleased with the results. I planted from starts mostly, picked up at my local nursery. I spent the first few days post-planting fretting over my little plantlets and hoping they were getting enough water and sunlight. I spent a lot of time reading the Sunset Western Garden book and asking my much more knowlegable friends questions like, "what if something eats them?" and, "how can I tell if they're going to get bigger?" After my plants started flourishing I then pestered them all with updates about my vegetables and how big they were getting.
I think it's safe to say that some of the novelty of having my very own fresh vegetables to eat has worn off by now (I am, in fact, growing a little tired of my plentiful zucchini crop) but I am terribly excited about branching out into more exotic vegetables as the seasons progress.
Early on this year I planted three types of tomatoes (none of which have ripened just yet) a lovely cucumber (which has vined quite beautifully) zucchini, and yellow crookneck squash. I later planted some carrots, beets, and red leaf lettuce in a raised bed from seed for fall harvest. I'll definitely re-plant all of the varieties I've grown this year next year as well, but I also want to try growing spaghetti squash, snow peas, and green beans next year as well.
