Strawberry Beds

We have tried the fancy strawberry pot, but after a few hot days without water they would crisp and brown. Then we planted an entire 50+ foot row on the wet side of the garden. They didn’t dry out there, but neither did the weeds. We also discovered we are not alone in our love of strawberries. They have terrible camouflage, and the birds kept our bushes nicely picked over. What they missed, the evil goats slipped their incredibly long necks through the fence and finished off. Berries, leaves, stems – nothing survived the goats.

Hopelessly, we had given up on growing strawberries till we had raised beds. That wasn’t going to happen till the other projects got finished – code for five years out.

But our neighbors moved and had us dismantle their garden. In which God had left us boxes filled with organic dirt and strawberry plants. Excitedly we took everything home and began refurbishing.

The first point of order was to reinforce all joints with plenty of star “Torx” screws. If you are still using Philip’s heads, you need to switch – star heads are SO much easier to use. The girls can put them in!

After that we mixed all our random buckets of paint and slapped a good, thick layer on. Hopefully this will be a water barrier and give the boxes a few more years of life.

Then we straightened out the hardware cloth and stapled that on the bottom. This is crucial. Believe it or not gophers can and will climb all the way up the bottom and decimate your patch.

To protect our bounty from birds we will drive rebar stakes in along the sides to hold grey conduit PVC pipes. That way we will be able to arch the PVC across the box and drape garden netting over.

The boxes complete, we then placed them exactly where we wanted them the rest of our lives. There is no easy way to move these things once filled with dirt! At this stage you will also want to add any compost or fertilizer needed. This is the best time to do that, because once there is fruit on the bushes, you cannot, or the plants will drop their fruit.

Time to plant plants now! You have to keep in mind when spacing them, that strawberries grow runners, which start new plants. So you do not want to crowd the box. But, if you are impatient like us, and have too many leftovers, they can be a little closer together. Also, be very careful not to bury the crown of the plant, or it will rot away.

Because the boxes are so close to the faucet, we intend to mainly hand water right now, but we will probably install drip tape eventually. Drip tape is a life saver in any garden! Not only is it hands-off, but you don’t need to worry about forgetting to water the garden, and everything is taken care of during a summer vacation.

We have no idea what kind of strawberries we planted, but it looks like they are June bearing – Hooray! That means, when June rolls around, every bush begins setting on berries at once. This way you only have one month of intensive strawberry picking and can process in big batches instead of spreading it over the summer. The only downside is there are none to snack on in May and July…

To our joy the bushes began filling out, and setting on berries. We didn’t really even expect a harvest this year, but have gotten 3 or 4 good bowl fulls from our 9 beds! Next year, after some fertilizer, we should have more – Lord willing. After de-stemming and quartering we celebrated the harvest with a delicious strawberry shortcake (here is the recipe we used). The ultimate summer dessert of cake, whipped cream, and fresh strawberries.

Psalms 34:8
O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him.

~Ann