Mother's Day is over. It may have been a gift, a purchase or a personal creation that has made you the proud owner of a beautiful hanging basket, window box or patio pot.

Now what? Start by finding the proper location. Hopefully the creator of your container knew enough about plant's water and light needs to make a compatible combination. If you are working with morning sun almost anything works. If you have more shade or afternoon sun it is a bit trickier.

If your container includes begonias, impatiens, torenia or the increasingly popular sweet potato vine, it is a candidate for a shadier location. Fuschias will tolerate only a bit of direct sun. Putting water on a begonia leaf when it is hot will soon destroy its appearance.

If you spot any of the geraniums, petunias, grasses, gaura, portulacas, verbena or scaveola in your basket, you have a candidate for the sun.

As important or perhaps more important than location is the person holding the water hose. Moist is desired. Wet or dry can spell disappointment. Over-watering is a common problem.

The easiest way to determine the water needs is to lift the container. It should not be very light or very heavy. Also, if you poke a finger into the soil, it should feel neither dry or wet unless you are just finished or are just ready to water. The million bell petunias are very sensitive to moisture stress. A heavy wilt or soggy feet writes a quick obituary for them.

In general, a light feeding weekly is enough to keep your container happy. I would suggest a heavier feed for anything that looks like a petunia. If the basket starts to look tired by mid summer an extra shot of fertilizer often is necessary.

A container needs regular fertilizer. The plants in the ground in your garden most likely will be happy on a much leaner diet of fertilizer. None is appropriate for most flowers.

Your container probably is filled with a prepared potting soil. It will have a wetting agent incorporated already. However, these often play out as the season advances making the container harder to keep moist. Starting in late June, a few drops of liquid dishwasher soap added to your water every three or four weeks will maintain the water holding characteristics of your soil mix.

Placing garden soil in a container often is the start of problems. It usually stays too wet and often has a storehouse of pathogens ready to be activated.

By mid summer many surviving containers could use a haircut. Do it and add a bit of fertilizer and I suspect beauty will return shortly.

They sure are pretty now. I hope these tips will extend your enjoyment.