If space is limited, if salad eating pests are a problem at ground level or you’d just like a hanging accent in that sunny spot, consider a suspended salad basket.

Decide how low you’d like the basket to hang. Bend the wire hanger ends all at once to ensure a level hanging basket. Attach wires to basket edge by bending them around the top wire rim. Moisten the sphagnum moss (EZ-Wet Soil Penetrant speeds the process, 1tbs/gal water). Take the moss and line the basket with it. An inch thickness will be just enough to hold the soil in. Place moss all the way up the sides of the basket and make it extra thick around the top rim. We suggest you place a Soil Moist Mat for Hanging Baskets over the moss in the bottom of your basket. It contains water holding polymer.

Now put about 3″ of soil into the bottom of the basket.

Add 1 Tbs. of Osmocote slow release fertilizer and mix into the soil. Carefully make an opening in the moss wall from the inside. Take a baby lettuce plant and gently coax the root ball through the opening, ending up with the roots well inside the basket and the leaves out. Plant 3-6 plants like this on this layer.

Cover the roots with 1-2″ of soil mixed with Osmocote slow release fertilizer and repeat with another layer of plants. Fill the basket for the final time to within 1″ of the top. This provides watering room. Add the final 1 Tbs. Osmocote slow release fertilizer. Mix in and plant the top of the basket with the remaining plants. Hang; water well. Keep evenly moist, grow and enjoy fresh salad greens all winter long.

Try this with violas too. In spring replace lettuce with Herbs

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