Keeping your fuchsia fabulous.

 

 

There’s nothing quite like a fuchsia hanging basket. The colors are incredible. Keeping your fuchsia hanging basket beautiful all summer long depends on the location of your hanging basket, watering, feeding and deadheading. Fuchsia need shade in order to thrive. They can handle early morning sun, but do best when they are in the shade all day. Watering fuchsia is fairly simple. They generally like to be kept evenly moist. Hanging baskets are especially prone to drying out quickly, so this time of the season, you should check your fuchsia hanging basket twice a day, once in early morning and again in early evening.

A simple way to see if your basket needs water is to lift it from underneath. If the basket feels light, it needs to be watered. If it feels heavy, it doesn’t need to be watered.  When you water, give your plant enough so that it starts to drain out the bottom.  Keep up with removing spent flowers on your fuchsia.  As soon as a blossom starts to fade, remove it so the plant can re-direct its energy toward producing blooms, not seed.

Feed your fuchsia every 10 days to 14 days with water-soluble Fertilome 20-20-20.  

Fuchsias are generally insect and disease free but can have problems with aphids, thrip and spider mites, especially this time of the season. Aphids will show up along the flower stem and the plant leaves will be sticky. Spider mite damage will show up on the leaves of your plant. Affected leaves will discolor and eventually fall off.

Apply Safer® Insect Killing Soap to control these insects. Thrip will also cause leaf and flower damage.

To control thrip, as well as aphids and other insects, use Bonide® Eight, which is a stronger insecticide. Another problem which may cause leaves to discolor and fall off is the disease called rust. If your plant has rust, the underside of the leaf will be orange colored.

Rust can be controlled with Bonide® Sulfur fungicide. Sometimes, leaves get old and drop off. It’s part of the process and there’s nothing wrong with your plant. If your fuchsia has a problem and you’re not sure what it is, bring us a sample. We’ll figure out what’s going on and help you find a solution.