Prepare Healthy Meals With Your Own Hanging Garden

Enjoy A Healthy Harvest With Hanging Basket Gardens

When vegetable planting time comes around, do you walk around your yard in circles trying to figure out where to start digging? Why not look up? Yes, you can plant several vegetables quite successfully over your head in hanging gardens.

The basics of planting vegetables in hanging baskets is very similar to planting flowers. You need plenty of sunshine and water, along with a strong support system. Once you fill the pot with good drainage material and soil, you are good to go. But, there is always that one last question: “What vegetables can I plant?”
Since hanging baskets are great for anything that trails or drapes, we have a few fun suggestions. Let's take a look at several vegetables that you can plant in your hanging garden with very nice (and delicious!) results.

Cucumbers

You know how cucumbers take over the ground in a garden when left to roam. In a hanging basket, you can either let them trail over the edge or you can provide some weather-proof rope or string tied to the structure the basket is hanging from, and coax them to crawl up those strings. Be sure to check often and pick them before they get too big and fall off the vine. Since the vines and leaves are typically very large, be sure to use a pot that's over 12 inches in diameter and limit yourself to about 2 or 3 plants.

Beans

String beans are another natural climber and work very well in a hanging basket. Again, you will want to provide a trellis made of string to give the beans something to wrap around as they grow. You could add a wooden structure to the basket but adding more weight is something you might want to avoid. String works just fine as long as it is weather-proof and sturdy. Choose a large pot and plant about 3 or 4 plants, then be sure to pick your beans when they are still young and tender for best results.

Peas

What a lovely sight it is to see sweet peas curling around a hanging basket! The tendrils of this plant are quite aggressive so you will want to provide plenty of opportunity for them to explore, and plenty of room away from other plants to keep them from taking over. Rather than a few pieces of string, you may want to choose a mesh (nylon or wire) an hang it from the support system you have the basket attached to. Again, choose a large pot, but go ahead and plant about 5 to 6 plants as pea vines tend to stay rather petite. And, here's another hint; harvest those pea vines. They're edible, too.

Tomatoes

Choose a patio variety (cherry or grape) for the easiest way to have a bumper crop of tomatoes. Anything larger than that may tend to drop off the vine before you get a chance to pick them. These types of tomatoes do just fine draping over the basket and don't require support for climbing. However, you may want to provide some structure or string to coax the plants upward if that helps conserve space.

If you have wanted to try your hand at container gardening, but lack the floor space to set out pots, hanging your garden may be just the perfect thing. Look around the outside of your house; is there somewhere to hang a basket? Give this fun gardening a try and you could soon be enjoying fresh produce right outside your window!