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How to Set Up a Simple, Inexpensive Strawberry Bed
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Nov 28, 2023
I don't have an ideal spot to grow strawberries, so I decided to create one! In this video, I walk through how I set up and prepped a new area for growing strawberries. Thank you for watching! Here's a similar corrugated metal edging to the one I used for this project: https://amzn.to/3trqqCd At The Fruit Grove, our goal is to provide the best possible information, tips, recipes, and advice to help you start and utilize your own fruit grove, whether it’s just one tree or a whole backyard orchard. Visit our website for more fruit-related gardening info, tips, and recipes: https://thefruitgrove.com #gardening #fruitgarden #blackberries #backyardgardening
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0:00
I desperately want to grow strawberries in my backyard, and it kind of seems like everything
0:04
is going against me. Now, where I used to live, it was perfect for growing strawberries
0:08
I remember basically just tossing strawberry plants into the ground, and then a few months
0:14
later beautiful berries grew. I did nothing. Now that's not going to be the case here
0:18
I live in East Texas now, and East Texas is the gardening capital of Texas
0:22
It's great for a lot of things. It's great for a lot of fruit, but it's not so great for strawberries
0:28
So that means it's on me to create the best strawberry growing situation that I can
0:34
So that's my task for today. I'm going to be setting up and prepping a bed to plant my strawberries in and hopefully
0:40
it's going to be enough to overcome my less than ideal circumstances
0:45
Here we go. This is the spot that I'm going to be putting my new strawberry bed and it's located right
0:52
next to my regular garden where I have my raised beds for my vegetables
0:57
The garden is surrounded by this fence that we actually put up specifically for the purpose of being able to plant things around it
1:04
So this really was part of the plan the whole time. By the way, if you're interested in seeing how we put together this really easy and inexpensive garden fence
1:11
I do have another video on that, so I'll be sure to link to it. So there's some good things going for this spot for growing strawberries
1:18
For one thing, it's sunny. It's sunny, but it is going to be protected by some tall trees from the late afternoon, really intense sun that we tend to get here
1:26
It's also, since it's near my garden, it's going to be easy to run irrigation into the bed
1:31
But some of the challenges include, first of all, my soil. And my soil is basically completely sand
1:39
It's pure sand. And that's good in some ways because strawberries like really well-drained, loose, sandy soil
1:48
So it's not a bad starting point, but I am going to have to add some amendments to my soil
1:53
to make sure there's enough organic material to retain some moisture and feed my plants over time
1:59
Another problem with the sand is that it likes to just go everywhere
2:03
The minute we get a heavy rain, the sand just runs down the yard and doesn want to stay put So I decided to make my strawberry bed sort of a semi bed I going to put a border around the entire bed that going to give
2:17
me a little bit of vertical space to add some soil amendments and to solve a couple other problems
2:24
as well. So one of the other problems is my grass. I have St. Augustine grass and for those of you up
2:31
north who don't know what that is, it is not the soft carpet of beautiful grass that you get up
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north. This stuff is tough. It is really heat tolerant, it's hardy, and it spreads by sending
2:45
out these really long kind of aggressive runners everywhere, especially into garden beds. So I'm
2:53
hoping that by adding this border around the garden it's going to block some of those runners
2:57
from getting into my strawberry bed. And speaking of things spreading where they're not supposed to
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of course strawberries also love to spread pretty aggressively and send out runners
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So again, I'm hoping the border keeps those things in place as well. And then finally
3:11
it's just going to make it easier to mow and edge around and keep it looking nice and neat
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So that's the plan. Now I just have to do it. The first step is to measure and mark where exactly to dig the trench for the border
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I made my strawberry bed about 40 inches deep so I marked that with a little spray paint
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And then after measuring the whole length of the bed I just connected the marks so that I had a
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really clear line as a guide for digging. Next I followed my painted line with the shovel and
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loosened up the grass in a nice straight line. Then I went back and just removed the grass and
3:51
shook out as much excess soil as I could. Once I had a clean, grass-free edge
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I went back and started digging out a deeper trench. This is what it looks like
4:08
after digging out this whole trench. I tried to keep this side as flat as possible
4:12
to make it really easy to butt the barrier up against it, but you can see I was aiming for about six inches deep deep so that hopefully the 10 inch barrier will be six inches underground and three to four inches kind of depending on the slope above
4:28
the ground. So we'll see if we can make that happen. The product I decided to use is this corrugated metal edging which I've linked to in the video
4:38
description and comments below. This roll is 20 feet long and it was about $30, but this is the exact amount I needed
4:46
to surround the outside of my strawberry bed. Once I unrolled the edging with just a little bit of trouble, I used a sharpie to mark where
4:54
I needed to bend it to make the corners of the bed
5:00
I grabbed some scrap pieces of wood to help me make 90-degree bends in the middle
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Then I enlisted the help of my husband to help me place the bent edging along the trench I dug
5:15
because my bed is really long, so I needed an extra set of hands. This took a little bit of
5:21
maneuvering to get it in just the right spot, but it wasn't too hard with a little bit of help
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Once the edging was in place, then it was just a matter of going down the line and backfilling it
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with the soil that I dug up. I really had to tamp the soil down firmly so that the edging was as
5:39
straight as possible. It wanted to be a little bit wavy until I really pressed the soil into it
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and then we were able to straighten it out pretty well. We did have to go along and remove a couple
5:49
of extra roots that were in the way of the edging, but that wasn't too bad. As I went down the line I kept checking to make sure that the border was staying
5:59
straight and even and I was avoiding that wavy look. And here's the final look
6:05
with the metal border fully in place and at this point I haven't added any soil
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amendments so eventually the soil line inside is going to come up just a little
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bit higher but I'm really pleased with how it turned out I think it's going to
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be easy to maintain and mow around and it's going to keep everything in its
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place, which is what I needed to do. My strawberries just came in so I going to get these in the ground The first thing I have to do now that I finished my bed is get my soil amended so that these can be happy and actually grow me strawberries That the idea anyway
6:37
Sand is certainly not a bad thing for strawberries. They like loose sandy soil
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They also have shallow roots, so I don't necessarily need to do a ton to amend my soil
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but I am gonna add a few bags of compost to my soil
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and I'm also gonna throw in some peat moss that I had that's gonna help with the acidity
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strawberries like it a little on the acidic side. Here are my strawberry plants. I've chosen two types. I have over here on the left is early glow and
7:03
then these are purple wonder and they're both June bearing strawberries. And if
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you're curious why I only grow June bearing strawberries I have a video on
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that and I'll be sure to link to it so you can find out all about that
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Thank you
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That's it
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That's how you make a very simple strawberry bed, semi-raised bed. I hope this video is helpful to you, and it inspires you to maybe grow something a little
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outside of your comfort zone. Something that's going to make you stretch and just, you know
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see what you can do to work with your circumstances. I mean, that's what gardening is all about
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So thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video
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