Alan: Well, a popular item for Mother's Day are hanging baskets.

Kevin: Butterfly bush. 

Alan: Butterfly bush? Maybe. Depends on your mom. But most normal moms are going to really appreciate a beautiful hanging basket or a container combination pot. These things are already grown. They're already beautiful when you buy them.

And at Dill's Greenhouse, we have a huge selection of many different sizes. We have eight inch, we have 10 inch, 12 inch, 14 inch, we have moss baskets, a big container with a spagnum moss around the edge of it and much more soil volume so you can have different plants in there that end up with a huge basket that can actually be grown because there's enough soil to grow it.

Taking care of hanging baskets.

Now, when we sell a basket we put, as you're carrying it out the door, will put a slow release fertilizer on it. That helps fertilize the plant through the summer months. The fertilizers that we use is a five to seven month fertilizer. It doesn't take care of all the fertilizer needs. You're going to want a couple of times a month at least to put some Miracle Gro or some kind of water soluble fertilizer on that. And especially some plants that are heavier feeders like petunias.

Petunias, they like a lot of fertilizer, so you want to take care to make sure to put those things on there because if you don't, it could start looking straggly, not the beautiful plant that you bought. And then you'll think what's wrong with this.

Another thing to consider is, as the plants get really big and start to hang down too low, just prune it. If you prune a basket, well, one time through the growing season, it's going to make that basket stay beautiful throughout the whole summer.

And the other thing to remember with a hanging basket is to water. You have this ball of soil up in the air with the plant growing in it. It doesn't have the ground to protect it. It's going to dry out a lot more than the ground is. So you want to make sure that you keep adequate water on it. You don't want to keep it soaking wet. But let it dry down to where the plant has not started to wilt yet, but that you can be picked up that basket and feel that it's lighter. If you can feel that, it's time to water. Then water until it takes up all the water it can, it'll start to run out of the bottom of the basket. Then don't water it again until it's dry again. So you don't wanna keep it wet.

But now there are times in the summer, you'll have to water every day, especially the smaller the basket, the more often you'll have to water it. And there are several plants that you can buy that vinca, portulaca, they do a lot better if you're one who neglects watering, and get home from work and notices, oh, no, it's already wilting. Those things can recover really fast and they just don't need as much water as other plants.

So if you're really good at watering, then go ahead and buy a fuchsia. Fuchsias are beautiful, but they will dry out on you. And if you let that happen too many times they'll recover but they lose their blooms. So you don't want to lose all your blooms. That's why you have the basket.

Each week we're going to answer some of the more asked questions we get from our customers at Dill's Greenhouse, as well as on our Facebook page. 

From plants to products. We'll be covering quite a number of gardening questions this year. 

If you have a gardening question you'd like us to answer, don't hesitate to shoot us an email at info@greenhouse.net 

We may answer the question in a future Ask Dill's Greenhouse episode, or spotlight your question on our Facebook page.