We decided to plant a strawberry patch.
We've had strawberry patches before, but the strawberries took over and the weeds took over, so we made a pyramid. We saw these in a seed catalog, but they were pretty expensive, so we decided to make our own.
We bought a 40 ft roll of lawn edging for less than $13. . . and some top soil and one bag of peat moss.
Cut the edging into 3 pieces.
18ft - 10 3/16" for the bottom 6 foot circle.
12ft - 6 13/16" for the middle 4 foot circle.
6ft - 3 3/8" for the top 2 foot circle.
My son connected them by overlapping the ends, and using a soldering iron and melting the ends together on both sides. I wish I had taken a picture when he did this, but I didn't. Because he did cut out about a 1 1/2" piece on one of the ends before he overlapped them. But you probably wouldn't have to do this.
We placed it in a tilled part of our garden. We pushed the bottom 6 ft circle down in the freshly tilled ground about half way, then dumped 12 - 40 lb bags of topsoil and a 2cu ft bag of sphagnum peat moss inside it. We mixed it up good with a hoe. Then we pulled the dirt toward the inside (keeping the outside dirt level even with the top of the 6 ft circle) and placed the 4ft circle around the pulled up dirt. We leveled the dirt out and then pulled the extra toward the center and placed the last 2ft circle around it.
We spaced 18 strawberry plants in the three layers. Three in top, Six in the middle and 9 in the bottom layer. We bought 6 packs of them at WalMart.
We have a chance of frost around here till about the middle of May, so my son went to the building and found these long plastic electrical conduits. He punched four holes around the outside of the pyramid, stuck the pipes in them and voila - we have a frame to put plastic over when there is a chance of frost. It might also be handy in case we have trouble with birds and have to put netting over them. My son comes up with the neatest ideas sometimes.
We bought ever-bearers, and there is plenty of room for the runners to spread out and take root, so I hope we get to enjoy fresh picked strawberries this year.
Posted by Janet Smart on Writing in the Blackberry Patch
