Tomatoes, Strawberries & Herbs in Hanging-Basket

Well, we planted up our Summer Hanging-Baskets last time and this time round I thought I'd give you a few other ways to enjoy your hanging baskets - and be able to produce your own grown fruit & veg at the same time.

Tomatoes: the best tomatoes suitable for hanging baskets are the tumbler varieties such as "Tumbling Tom”. I couldn’t find any tumbling variety in young plant form to demonstrate basket making so I resorted to seed and we'll come back to the basket preparation later.

I decided also to try planting the tomatoes into fibre pots. These can then be planted directly into the hanging basket when big enough - pot and plant. This gives the plant a further head start because you’re not disturbing the roots as you transplant - and you do, no matter how careful you are, in the traditional pot method.
The roots grow through the fibre pots and they disintegrate eventually in the basket.

 I filled and laid out 22 pots in a seed tray (anything that will keep them upright), and gave them a good watering.
My packet of Sutton’s seeds gave me a generous 22 seeds per pack - and they suggest one plant per 12" basket .That’s a lot of tomatoes & baskets for your few euro! I'm going to use 14" baskets when they are ready so I thing I'll put two young plants in. The seed is small but easy enough to handle, and place one seed per pot and sieve about 6mm (1/4 in) of fine compost on top. Keep pots moist and keep at 18-21C (65-70F) on the windowsill or glasshouse. They will take about 7-12 days to germinate and we can transplant then when they are nice & strong, directly into the baskets. This way saves pricking out seedlings after they germinate into pots of around 3”.

Strawberry Baskets: I had a little more luck in finding strawberry plants. I picked up three different variety’s to try out - Honeoye (early - midseason) Elsanta (midseason) and an alpine variety (small, but easy to grow and said to have the best taste. We'll plant the lot and see what produces the best results - both quantity & taste.

Fill the 14" hanging baskets the same way as usual - multipurpose compost and slow release feed and water well, I'm putting three plants of the same variety into each - again I think they look better if the grow at the same rate, but if you’re not bothered or don’t want three baskets you could chose an early, mid and late variety and put them together to really prolong your cropping season.

I'm going to speed things up by leaving them in my glasshouse, but any sunny spot should produce results. Birds do like the fruit though so protect with netting if this becomes a problem. As with any hanging basket, don’t let them dry out - water daily in warm weather but do check daily anyway.





Herb baskets: Another handy way of using your baskets is to plant them with your favourite herbs. As well as looking good all year round - if you pick the perennial herbs, you can hang them beside your kitchen door for easy access to your own herb garden.
Herbs I’ve found to do well are Rosemary, Thyme, Sage, Parcel (a herb that looks like parsley but tastes like celery!) Chives. Can’t really thing of one that won’t , but mint would be better in its own pot as it is inclined to need more room and takes over - either garden or pot.
Put in what you like to use, it’s always the best method, no point growing what you won’t use.



Hope you like what I've been trying out, have very positive comments on some herb baskets I've given out on trial - let’s hope I get the same positivity from the Strawberries & Tomatoes!

 As always happy gardening.