Strawberry Towers Forever

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you will have been one of the first to see my sneak peak of my new strawberry tower that I built afew weeks ago along with the help of Mr. Meadow! For the rest of you, without further ado, here she is:

I decided behind the raised fruit bed was the ideal spot for it and it gave good access to get to it for harvesting/tending. Don’t mind the weedy/muddy/some grass remaining but its been trodden on ground around that area. It will eventually be made into a proper path hopefully this year or possibly next!

Here is a shot of how the veg/fruit/herb area of the garden and the greenhouse looks. I’m really happy with it so far! Don’t mind the grass, it is not staying! Right now, it is just serving as temporary pathways. I have a great plan for the fence panel to the left of the strawberry tower, but I’m keeping that a secret for now! You’ll have to stayed tuned to my blog to find out more! 🙂

Right now the strawberries are quite small as I divided them when I planted up the strawberry tower to give them space to fill out. I will have to take another photo when they’re in all their glory this Summer! I have yet to fill the top shelf of the tower because I need to get the ladder out and I haven’t had time yet. But no doubt I’ll get round to it in the coming weeks. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch some sunshine soon too! Spring isn’t feeling too far away, or is that just my wishful dreaming? I also need to paint the strawberry tower with the same preservative/stain I used for the greenhouse (which also needs a second coat too at some point) and the raised veg/fruit bed. Oh yes and the deck next to the greenhouse needs painting. How long is a piece of string? Somebody send help! Heh.

Some of you may be wondering why I decided to build this contraption rather than just plant straight in the ground or pots as I used to do, well…

Why grow out, when you can grow up?

My garden is the most spacious I have had, which is great, but I have still needed to consider carefully where everything will go because I want to cram so much into this garden! It’s a hard life I know, heh.

Sooooo, with that mind, I decided hey I don’t want a dedicated strawberry plot. Why? Well:

1. Strawberries spread by runners, and by runners I mean these plants spread themselves far and wide running literally around your garden! (Which as a side note is actually a great advantage for you when it comes to propagating more plants for free, but I digress…)

2. This follows on from my first point: I have limited space for rows and rows of strawberry plants and I would need rows and rows of plants to give me an abundance of picking – which is what I want! Hence, it makes sense to stack the plants on a shelving system like this to give me more growing – and harvesting – space.

3. It turns a boring fence panel into something so much more interesting! I think it has really lifted this side of the garden.

4. Strawberries are evergreen, so planting my strawberries in this way is great in breaking up the expanse of brown fence panelling and creates a living green wall effect. This would be fantastic used on a deck or near a seating area. Just imagine lazy Summer evenings spent enjoying the sunshine and picking strawberries freshly off your strawberry tower…! It is something I am considering replicating near our seating areas once we get round to building the decks! Stay tuned for that in the future!

Finishing off, here as some photos of my strawberries when they were growing in my last garden:

Well, that’s it for today. I hope you enjoyed reading all about my new strawberry tower! Let me know if you would like a tutorial on how to create one for yourself and I could write a blog post all about it. It was very affordable and simple to do!

Happy gardening my flower lovers 🙂

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Written by Bethany Wright at theenglishmeadow.wordpress.com