Sowing Seeds for Hanging Baskets Directly into the Basket

Hello, everyone, I live in Baja California, where the weather is very good for everything I have tried to grow so far. So far, I have only planted ready grown plants in the ground and in containers, but now I want to put some coir baskets on my patio rafters. I am going to plant moon flower, morning glory, dichondra and sweet peas in them. All of these grow so easily and so quickly from seeds that I am wondering if it would be OK to just put the seeds in the hanging baskets, hang them, and get results. The baskets are 12" in diameter. Anyone have any ideas about this? Thanks!

I would have two concerns with direct seeding into baskets. The first is, after seeding, the containers need to be kept uniformly moist and cool until germination is complete (usually by covering with plastic). If the planting media dries out too much during germination, the plants could die before they emerge. The second concern is closely related. No matter how uniform a given plant is in emergence, there can be a lot of variation in emergence of all the seedlings, not to mention the differences between differing species. Trying to keep the media moist and cool enough when some seedlings have emerged and others may be days away can be difficult. Alsos, some seed may not germinate which would lead to "holes" in your baskets and neccessitate transplanting from one basket to another.

If it were me, I would seed the plants in small pots, flats or six-packs in a shady protected area and then transplant them into the pots. This may seem like an uneeded step, but I think you will be happier with the results.

Beautifulyl said trc65. I totally agree with the above statement. trc. said it all. : )