Bringing Back Hanging Baskets

[ReptileAddiction]

Hello, a couple months ago I bought 2 beautiful hanging baskets. One with a trailing petunia, and one with 2 types of calibrachoa. They stopped blooming and looks horrible so I sheared off the old flowers, as many as I could, and gave them fish emulsion and compost tea. This was 3+ weeks ago and they look worse. They are very rootbound and I did not water them often enough Should I just water them more often and fertilize them or should I replace the plants?

[applestar]

I think when they are pot bound, the best thing to do is to pop the entire rootball out, cut the root ball apart like a cake separating the (usually multiple) plants -- I use an old cheap serrated Chef's Knife -- carefully untangling the plants.

Then pot up something like 1/2 to 2/3 of the original with fresh potting mix. I would loosen the roots a little bit first. Plant the "extra piece(s) of cake" in another container.

[ReptileAddiction]

I looked at them further and decided that there was no way I was going to get one of them back. It just got to drought stressed so I dumped it out and refilled it with good quality potting soil and 3 calibrachoas.

I had some soil moist granules that I have had for years that I decided to throw in there. I generally don't ever use them but I decided it might be worth trying it. We will see how these new ones do.