By Staff
I can remember when a hanging basket held only one type of flower – annuals.
Impatiens or fuschias.
Just one variety per basket, one whole basketful.
Now hanging baskets and containers are composed.
We stand and marvel at their composition.
In each attention-grabbing container or basket is packed more style, charm and punch per square inch than a whole garden.
Instantly these containers or baskets add a warm, colorful invitation to any entrance.
It can brighten any blank, drab area. Supplying and displaying colorful seasonal interest, anywhere you choose to sit or hang them.
Getting back to the superstar of containers or hanging baskets and today's article, calibrachoa (kal-ih-bruh-ko'uh), also known as million bells or super bells.
Charming, bountiful trumpet-shaped flowers from North and South America, tender plants, that resemble mini-petunias.
A vigorous, fast-growing plant producing hundreds of flowers.
Blooming from spring until first frosts, non-stop all summer.
And what every gardener should love is that they don't require any deadheading or needing to have any spent flowers pinched off.
As they are self-cleaning, which will save us gardeners lots of time to do other things.
Calibrachoas enjoy full sun and are very heat-resistant and disease-tolerant, but they need moist soil.
Since hummingbirds adore trumpet-shaped flowers, expect regular social calls from visiting hummers – especially baskets filled with red-colored flowers.
And calibrachoas are also a good nectar source.
They bloom in colors of pink with yellow throats, white, red, yellow, a light salmon or apricot and purple (often called blue in some catalogs and magazines).
The perfect filler in containers and baskets, low-growing, semi-upright (cascading or trailing off, I'd call them) with fine foliage. Growing to 10 inches tall, with one-inch trumpet-shaped blooms.
Perennial in zones 9-10 (unfortunately not our zone, which has recently been changed to zone 6).
Do you know that each year we use 600 million gallons of gasoline just for our lawn mowers?