Container Gardening - Strawberries

Container Gardening is so easy to start and maintain! Plus - you can get some great produce from it all. By following this basic plan of planting you can actually plant a wide variety of fruits and veg, as well as flowers and trees. With the addition of a beehive - you will have a fabulous garden!

You need the following to do this project:

1. A Container

2. A Dremal or a Drill with appropriate bits (If your pot DOESN'T have drainage and can be drilled)

3. One gallon of water

4. 1.5 cubic feet of compost (your choice of variety)

5. 2 cubic feet of Potting Soil

6. 8 strawberry plants

If you are like me - you might be frugal enough to find interesting things for containers. Thus the need for this step. If you have purchased a pot that has drainage - then skip this step.

What is pictured is a plastic tub that used to hold a mineral block for cows. So now that it is cleaned from that, I flipped the container bottoms up as pictured. Then take your Dremal or Drill with a small bit - shown in the pictures. Then drill about 40 holes equally spaced throughout the bottom of the pot. After you finished drilling the holes, flip the pot over again to make sure the holes have been fully drilled through. If you see the sun on the ground below the pot - you are good to go!

Starting with the Potting Soil, open the bag and dump the entire bag in the container. Then open the Compost, put at least half the compost, up to 3/4 of the bag of compost in the container. At this point you will be able to see the difference between the compost and the potting soil.

The compost may have large chunks of wood products in it, as that's part of what has been composted in. Take out any really large chunks as you mix the potting soil and compost together. No need to mix much deeper than the length of your forearm - the nutrients needed for the plants will be used in the roots closer to the top.

I had purchased two types of Strawberries - one 6 pack and two 2'' pots. They are also two different varieties - I thought I'd give them a try - you can purchase what you like for variety. But realize that some might have a shorter season than others. So make sure if you want the longer season variety, look for that on the tag.

1. Take plants out of pots - Keeping all the soil from the pot with the plant.

2. Space plants around the pot - I took each plant out and arranged them in the pot in a way that equally spaced them in the pot. Eventually, they will all get nice and bushy, so I wanted to accommodate for that.

3. Dig a hole the size and depth of the roots in the soil you mixed.

4. Add about a cup of water to the hole you just dug.

5. Place plant with roots "fluffed" into the watered hole

** I "fluff" my roots or squeeze them out of the neat potted look so they can seek out the water and nutrients they need to grow in their new environment.

6. Cover the roots with the potted soil and gently press the soil down over the roots.

7. Continue this process until all 8 plants are planted.

8. When finished planting, water the plants again.

Now that you have planted your strawberries - don't forget to water them regularly to make sure they produce the best fruit they can. Now you can plant just about any other type of plant for your garden in this method of container gardening.