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If not intended for exhibiting anyway, try to plant through the sides too, to give your basket a fuller shape much quicker and to get rid of that bare bottomed look fast! This can also easily be avoided by planting a layer or two of lobelias through the sides. Very effective, as it gives greenery quickly, they flower early too to give a much longer season of interest and also can provide a very pleasant colour contrast. Fuchsias used for HANGING POTS should be in good proportion to the pot, preferably having small or medium flowers. Cultivars should be of trailing or lax habit. Self-branching plants are the easiest to use for this purpose. Aim for a balanced ball-shape, growth filling the centre and top of the hanging pot and cascading over the edge to at least the depth of the pot, so the container is completely hidden. Healthy foliage and an abundance of flowers should be evenly distributed from the crown to the end of the trailing branches. Exhibits to be viewed from the top and sides when displayed in an elevated position, with container not visible when viewed at eye level. Top planting only is stipulated and more than one plant can be used. Choose early spring cuttings, autumn cuttings or 2nd year plants. Plant up in final container during April or May. For show purposes hanging pots must be commercially produced. As such, ordinary plant pots with hangers are prohibited. Any colour is allowed, though I recommend you avoid white. Hanging pots must have solid sides and do consult your show schedule for specified size, this can vary from society to society. At our Scarborough Show i.e. we have a class for a 165mm hanging pot (approx imperial equivalent 6½") for the novices and another class in the members only section for 216mm (approx imperial equivalent 8½"). IMPORTANT WARNINGS If growing hanging pots high up in the roof area of your greenhouse, please be aware that it gets really hot there and even if you are damping down the floor or benches the air remains relatively dry too. Hence ideal conditions for the dreaded red spider mite to thrive. Beware! The ideal solution would of course be to grow them somewhere else, like outside or in a shade house. However, if you can not leave your pots out maybe just taking them down during the hottest midday period, placing them on upturned pots on the floor, would improve matters. Hanging pots being smaller might be more manageable than baskets, but especially when planted up with more than one plant can dry our rapidly. At the height of the growing season watering more than once a day can be necessary and this frequent watering can cause leaching of plant food. RECOMMENDED VARIETIES Everyone has their own favourites and for growing at home certainly just grow what you really like. Over the years it has been noticed that certain varieties that so many members of the public love to grow never get a look in at the shows. This is a great shame really, as members of the general public get a real thrill from recognising them as the ones they grow at home. This, by the way, doesn't just apply to the basket/hanging pot classes, but to other classes too. Especially the hardy classes, where we tend to see the easy to conform to mushroom shaping cultivars like Mr. A. Hugget and Tom Thumb, while people are expecting to see the arching lovelies like Mrs. Popple and the Magellanicas.
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