Hanging baskets/pots are great because they increase the amount of food you can grow, particularly if you only have a small space, make unproductive spaces productive and are good for amenity (they look nice). Over the years I have tried them with varying levels of success mainly because they have one significant downfall – the dry out quickly, particular if exposed to the hot dry winds of a western Sydney Summer.
I am always on the lookout to increase the area we can use to grow productive plants and just recently have been re-evaluating some of our vertical spaces. I have not done anything with hanging baskets for years and certainly not since the new back deck was constructed. So I took some time to have a look at what we could do.
Where to Hang them?
Just to refresh, our deck is on the western side of the house, to reduce the amount of sun hitting the back wall of the house and making it more tolerable on those really hot days, without having to run the air con 24/7. It was a great place to install productive hanging baskets, but I had a bit of a dilemma. If I installed the hooks on the outside end of the rafters, the baskets would get lots of sun in the cooler months but they may overheat in the full heat of summer, If I put them inside the protective blinds and under the shadecloth covered area they would not get enough light, particularly at the start of the growing season before the plants started to spill over the edge and trail down over the pot. What to do?
After much consideration, and to illustrate that light shines through to even the dullest places at times, I had my answer. As they say in the taco commercial - “Por que no los dos!” ie, why can’t we have both? So that is what I did, I installed two sets of hooks for each hanging basket so that they could be hung in the outer sun drenched area or the inner more protected area as required.
What Pots?
The next decision was which pots to use. I wanted hanging baskets that were a decent size and after some looking around I found a brand that offered 340mm wide, 8 litre plastic self-watering hanging pots which were Australian made, so I bought half a dozen. I am not a huge fan of commercial self-watering pots because I find that the reservoir is usually too small and they are more of a gimmick than serious gear, but in this case I figured every little bit helps.
Mind you, I had no intention of leaving them like that. Before I put soil into the pots I made up an olla composed of two 12cm unglazed terracotta pots connected with silicon sealant, and with the same sealant blocking up the drainage hole of the bottom pot. This will give me a reservoir capacity of a bit over a litre, plus whatever is in the self-watering pot reservoir itself.
What plants?
This one was fairly easy. I wanted to grow productive plants which would trail over the side of the pot and look nice and jungle-y, so I chose cherry tomatoes and cucamelon, plus maybe a bit of luffa and Lebanese cucumbers as well.
They have only just gone up, so watch this space for updates!
