How do you all grow your strawberries? I want to grow a lot of strawberries in a small space, any suggestions? I am looking at tiered raised beds, tiered containers, and regular containers. Open to ideas, I have seen a lot of methods, but I would prefer something inexpensive and easy.
My current method is here. I can grow 50-60 plants in 2 square feet. More if the towers are taller or wider.
What do you use to secure it in place?
I have a 4 foot by 8 foot raised bed that I plant a few strawberries and let the beds fill up with plants. Once the bed is filled I thin out the old plants after production to keep a supply of young plants.
I put two 6 foot heavy duty (not the flimsy ones) t posts in the ground and then straps around the middle and towards the bottom. I made sure the t posts and the towers were positioned as close to perfectly vertical as possible using a level during installation.
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I am considering trying fire pit rings… you can get them ar lowes or home depo…
Looks like they would make a nice raised bed and they do come in different sizes.
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I am looking forward to this thread… i have tried twice and while it looked like a great idea i ended up with a gazillion plants and runners and it all went crazy. I think i bought 50 plants and by the second year i had 300 that i didnt have the heart to kill. So i gave them away and ended up with some nice trades. If you have the desire to propagate…strawberries are nuts.
As of right now, i am going to grow them in some old gutters. I saw some really good ideas, and some really bad ones.
While we are on topic- I grow Seascape and Mara des Bois. I am thinking of adding Ozark Beauty… everything i see on them looks good…anybody grow these?
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I have seascape… eversweet and surecrop. So far.
I have grown ozark beauty and one of gurneys very large June bearers mixed in a bed in the past… we got tons of really nice berries from that bed… 3 or 4 years.
My daughter was 2 when I started that bed…
Well anyone that has small kids… you really need a nice bed of strawberries… so much fun watching them enjoy those.
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I had Seascape. They produced a June crop but stopped producing from July to September then started flowering in September and the berries failed to ripen before frost destroyed them. I get more from my June bearers than my Seascape.
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This is a great idea! Im gonna check how much it’ll cost. Looks kinda nice too.
Yeah that’s exactly what I did with ones I had in previous years. I dont think I will let many of them runner this year. Can you essentially propagate a variety each year and never have to buy more? I know Strawberries lose production after a couple of years, but I dont know exactly how long.
Is that 3-4 years of the same plants or did you replace them?
Found this at Lowe’s online.
13.2" high. 36" Diameter.
On that older SB bed… I took them out after 3 or 4 years… started going down hill after that.
I grew a 150 lb pumpkin in that bed the next year. My record… but I only tried that once.
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How many do think could fit in there ?
I added a few types of strawberries last year including some seascape. Even with new plants we still got berries throughout the summer off the seascape. We also some June bearing varieties that do well in the PNW; Rainier (excellent), Puget crimson (none last year on new plants but we’re awesome from u-picks), Shuksan, and an unknown from a neighbor we used to replace some old plants in pots and as ground over in a spot
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Ok scratch my idea of growing in gutters… this may be what i have been looking for.
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@757Will — I wondered that myself… how many strawberry plants in a 36" diameter ring…
I found the article below on “Square foot gardening Strawberries”…
Square Foot Gardening Strawberries? – Strawberry Plants . org).
The “Expert” there says the end result really needs to be 4 per sq foot.
Not that you would start out like that… but at season end, you thin them out leaving a max of 4 per sq ft (or they get too matted, shade each other out).
A 36" diameter is 113.1 sf (per google)
Which is more than I expected…
Which seems to be saying 113 x 4 = 452 plants total in a 36" diameter ring…
Can that be right ? sounds like WAY to many to me.
I am thinking I would need at least 4 of those rings.
If the 113 sf thing is correct… is does seem reasonable to grow at least 100, possibly 200 in a 36" diameter ring.
PS… my Seascape strawberries were ordered last spring and the shipment was delayed 45 days… so I started them a little late… and I kept the blossoms and runners off until mid August… they did fruit some last fall, but not a lot. Hoping that this year, they put out some fruit, the more the better.
My Surecrop plants are looking great and I let them runner a lot last year, so they multipled greatly. Hoping for a nice May June crop off them.
The Eversweet have been true everbearing strawberries for me… even in 100 degrees as (they are advertised). but they are smaller berries and not all that productive (low yield)… but that is in my food forest bed, where they get little attention and no watering.
I think if I had them in a nice raised bed in a easy to water location… they would produce much better.
I think that would be true of any strawberry. something you may need to baby a little to get really good results.
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Pie r square 1.5 feet X1.5 feet 3.1416 = 7.0686 square feet for 28 plants. Plants can hang over the edge so you can probably plant close to 40 plants.
If you are in an area with hot summers, I’d worry about how quickly those cinder blocks would dry out the soil, since, like a terracotta pot, they’ll wick moisture from the soil and then let it evaporate from their surface. Where I am, keeping anything in a container well-watered in the heat of summer is a challenge.
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Thanks @poncirusguy – I knew that did not sound right.
I found an online calculator that agrees with you too…
And I would probably need 4 of those.