Here are seven environmentally friendly ways to make a hanging basket for your organic garden that rarely needs watering, without paying much money.
Or any at all.
The less watering you have to do, the less work! Of course, you can buy water-retentive granules at garden centres but they're expensive and clumsy.
Put in too many granules and they swell so much that they push out the compost while draining your wallet.
Put in too few and they don't work.
And, arguably, they're not organic.
Solution: line your basket first with old nylon socks or pantihose, cut and opened out.
(True, they're not organic either.
But it's nice to be able to recycle them.
) Other green gardening tips are used tea bags, or large leaves like comfrey, or slabs of moss taken from an unpolluted roof or pond.
Once you've lined your basket, put into it - halfway to its rim - a quality plastic shopping bag of the kind that will not degrade quickly.
(That's another way to recycle something that's not environmentally friendly.
) Make sure this bag has no perforations.
You now have a water reservoir.
Fill that reservoir with hydroleca - lightweight expanded clay pellets which absorb water - or with perlite or vermiculite.
Barbecue charcoal works too.
It's light and absorbs moisture and you can subsequently dry it and burn it next year on the barbecue.
Fill the basket, around and above the reservoir, with compost.
Then plant your transplants in the top of the basket.
Water the basket massively so the central reservoir is full.
Then you can go on holiday for a fortnight, confident that your hanging basket will retain enough water so that your plants, rooting into the reservoir, will survive.
Suppose you'd like to have plants growing out the sides and base of the basket as well? No problem.
Simply substitute, for the plastic shopping bag in your basket, half a plastic milk bottle or a similar stiff plastic container.
Cut the top off the bottle so it becomes an open pot and fill it with hydroleca, perlite, vermiculite, charcoal, even tufts of rockwool cavity insulation.
Such a pot provides enough space around the sides and bottom to set plants beside and under it.
To irrigate the plants at the side and bottom, put some capillary strips into the inner pot before you put in your transplants.
The strips can be bootlaces, or pieces of sash cord or strands cut from an old nylon sock, even pantihose.
(Note: do not use wool, cotton or anything else degradable as a capillary strip.
It rots.
) Lead these strips from the reservoir into the compost and make sure they twine around and under your plants.
The reservoir will then supply enough water to let you lounge an extra week on the beach.
A totally free hanging basket You do not even need to buy the outer basket.
Procure a two gallon plastic bucket, the kind that canteens and decorators throw away.
Be sure its contents were innocuous.
Margarine, food or cooking oil is fine.
But beware of chemicals.
Scour it totally clean and perforate the base lavishly.
And proceed as above.
The bucket comes with its own handle, can be easily painted or wrapped decoratively in, say, hessian sacking, and - when inevitably the handle drops off - it can be recycled as a patio pot.
Another free basket can be made from large nylon net bags, the kind that supermarkets sell fruit in.
(The bags are cheap and they come with free fruit.
) Use a cut-down plastic milk bottle as the water reservoir.
You need not confine a hanging basket to flowers, of course.
Any small vegetable can be grown in a basket, whether or not disguised by flowers.
Cherry tomatoes can be grown upside down, their stems protruding from the bottom of the basket.
The top of the basket is then available to grow salad crops.
Hang an upside down tomato beside your porch and you have a great conversation starter.
Now you have a variety of hanging baskets that rarely need watering.
And they cost nothing.
Next time you see folk buying baskets or water retentive granules, at silly prices, just whisper to them 'plastic bags and milk bottles...
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