Fresh From the Garden

Stacking planter for strawberries

This morning out in the garden I loaded up my little harvest basket: several cucumbers, tomatoes, and a few strawberries.  There are several peppers that should be ready in few days, and the sweet corn is getting closer to ripe.  One cantaloupe is nearly full size, but still pretty green, two more nearly ripe; and the watermelon vine has two little melons coming along.

Pictured at right is my strawberry patch -- a stacking planter out on my patio.  I have a dozen or so everbearing strawberry plants in it, parsley, basil, petunias, and lobelia.  That's not enough to produce lots of strawberries, but for most of the summer, I've picked a few nearly every day; enough to have a few fresh-picked berries on a salad, a bowl of cereal or cottage cheese. Or maybe tonight I'll put them on ice cream.

I didn't have a sunny space in my garden available to plant strawberries, but by growing them in a container, I've managed to squeeze them in anyway.

Because each individual pot of the stacking planter has such a small volume of soil in it, I have to water it every day.  During last year's hotter summer, sometimes I had to water twice a day.  I rotate the whole planter about a quarter turn every week or so, to give all the plants good exposure to sunlight.

So far the birds haven't been bothering the strawberries, but I have a pop-up net I can put over the whole thing if needed.  I prefer not to, as it will also keep pollinators away.