Hanging Basket Idea

11 years ago

Hello all,

I've just started to collect a few hoya plants, but haven't had any luck finding reasonable sized hanging baskets. I understand that planting a small plant in a large basket isn't the way to go, so I came up with an idea to join two hanging baskets together to form a hanging sphere.

The baskets I've used are 40cm in diameter, and I'll be cutting out the top circle and supporting wires just enough to support the 13cm terracotta pot that is holding my hoya lacunosa. As it grows I will be training the vines to cover the sphere until it's completely covered.

What I'm worried about is whether the pot is big enough to allow the hoya to grow large enough to cover the entire sphere. The hoya itself is in a 5:1:1 mix (pine bark:peat moss:perlite) with a bit of Osmocote and sphagnum moss on top.

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Comments (3)

Denise
11 years ago
I like the concept. I think it's too large for your lacunosa. It's about 3x bigger than the pot that will go in it. I would put one of the large EA hanging pots in there - maybe a 10" pot or so.

I buy little bird cage style pot holders and am growing mostly Dischidias in them right now. Here's a photo of three...
{{gwi:527784}}
These have those coconut fiber liners, which seems to work well for Dischidias. Another one (below) I have growing in a plastic pot that sits down in the birdcage. The downside to this is that once the plant is thoroughly twisting around the bars, it's unlikely you could disentangle it to repot or move it out. But I love the look!

Denise in Omaha
teisa
11 years ago
Very pretty!
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greedyghost
11 years ago
I think alvaandr intends to set the pot in the second-from-the-top loop and let the vines cascade over the exterior of the sphere. Hence the size of the pot is determined by the diameter of the loop. I thought the same thing as you did, initially, that the pot would be placed on the inside.

It's still overpotted, but I'm less worried about that seeing as it's a clay pot and those are impossible to keep watered. Actually, I'm more worried about lacunosa drying out too fast than too slow, in that pot.

It's an interesting idea, tho, and I look forward to seeing how it plays out for you, alvaandr. It's just too bad that lacunosa isn't more of a twining species. There are a few small-leafed Hoyas that really like to climb and scramble and they would be really cute exploring an elaborate wire cage like that.

I love your birdcages, denise_gw. :) I have a carnosa in a birdcage and the problem is not so much with the disentangling, it's that it sticks its vines through the bars, or through the chain links and then grows leaves on the other side that are too large to be pulled back through. :P Luckily, my birdcage is a functional one, with the bottom held on by a series of hooks, for easy cleaning, so when I need to repot I just take off the bottom and reach in to perform a 'surgical operation', without ever taking the plant out of the cage.

Does anyone else miss the stage where GW would give you a "preview" of your post before you submitted it? I feel like I don't proofread as well without that moment. :P