How to Plant a Strawberry Pot

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I am not a gardener. So if I can do this – anyone can. Here’s how to plant a strawberry pot.

I like to do many things. I like to cook and bake, as well as sew, knit and crochet. But gardening is not one of them. I tried to garden many years ago, but I just don’t enjoy it. As a result, our yard mainly has easy to care for, low-maintenance shrubs and perennials.

Our yard is very simple but nice. I love seeing the camellias bloom in early spring. The pink peonies that I brought from my mother’s home after she passed and planted in our yard is a fond memory of her. In late spring and summer, I love to see and smell the beautiful lavender. But when it comes to vegetables and other edibles, it’s just not my thing.

So since this is the year of staying home and making the most of your space, I thought it was time to give gardening another try. So here’s how to plant a strawberry pot.

What is a Strawberry Pot?

A strawberry pot is a pot with multiple, small holes all around. The idea is that you plant individual strawberry plants in each hole. The plants grow and the strawberries cascade down for easy picking. You can have multiple plants all in one container. This is a great space saver as we have a very small yard with limited areas that get full sun.

I have a strawberry pot that has been sitting empty in my yard for years. I’m talking, years. I can’t even remember planting it, but I’m sure I tried. Not sure what happened or why I gave up, but I thought it was time to put it to good use.

How to Choose Strawberry Plants

At first, I thought I would just go to the gardening store and grab some strawberry plants. Who knew there were so many different kinds??? Well maybe you did, but I certainly didn’t. It can definitely be overwhelming to figure out what you should get.

Here are some tips for choosing strawberry plants for your pot:

• Consider what kind of strawberry you want. Some plant types specify if the strawberries are for eating/snacking or for jam making. I’m not exactly sure what the difference is but personally wanted snacking strawberries.
• How often do the plants produce fruit? There are a number of different types of strawberry plants that are considered to be “everbearing”. This means that they will continue to produce fruit (usually around every 6 weeks) until fall. This way you get multiple crops. For me, this was a definite plus. Why go to all this trouble for one crop?
• How big does the plant get? For our strawberry pot, I picked plants that said they were best for containers. These plants tend to be smaller and more compact. Some plants can be planted in your garden but they also take up more space. Those little side holes are small, so I wanted something that would be okay in a small space.

The plants that I got from our local gardening nursery were called “Kent” – fragaria x ananassa. While sometimes you can get information from the tags in the plants, I also spent time standing by the plants and looking up all the Latin names on my phone to get more information.

How to Prepare Your Strawberry Pot

One of the biggest issues with strawberry pots, especially the clay ones like I have is getting water evenly distributed throughout. If you water it from the top, by the time the plants near the bottom get enough water, you’ve over-watered the top ones.

When researching how to deal with it, many suggest putting a piece of PVC pipe with holes in it, down the centre.

Now perhaps one area that I know even less about, in comparison to gardening, would be plumbing. I soon found that PVC is actually not that cheap and it comes super long – like several feet long. I just needed a 12-inch length to match the height of my strawberry pot.

To make things easier, I found a pipe extender. It’s a pre-cut length of pipe that is attached to other pipes to make it longer. It is 12 inches long! This made things so much easier for me. I didn’t have to worry about having to cut the pipe to the right length and then wonder what I’m going to do with the rest of the pipe.

All I had to do was drill holes all around it, every 1 to 2 inches. This will allow water to flow out of it and reach all areas of the pot, including the ones at the bottom.

Now I have very limited skills with power tools but managed, with a 1/4 drill bit, to drill in holes all around this plastic pipe. Again – if I can do it, anyone can.

How to Plant a Strawberry Pot

Now the actual fun part. Now we can start planting. Take a look at the layout of your pot. My strawberry pot has 9 side holes. They are organized into 3 levels. Each level has 3 holes. Now all strawberry pots are the same. Yours may be different.

I covered the bottom of the pot with some rocks so that water can drain out without taking the soil with it. Lucky for me, we have lots of rocks around. My kids used to collect them so I have buckets of rocks sitting around the yard.

Next, place the pipe in the middle of the pot. Don’t worry about making it perfectly centred yet. You can manipulate that as you add in the soil. In the end, I filled the pipe up with little rocks. I’ve seen both online. I just think it looks nicer. The water can still get through obviously. In hindsight, I could’ve done this right away instead of leaving it to the end.

According to the people at the gardening nursery, the soil to use is Sea Soil. Sea soil is made from composted fish waste, as well as forest fines (bark and other organic parts that have fallen off logs during the sorting process). It is then left to compost for 2 years. You can use sea soil as is or add it to existing soil to enrich it. Since my strawberry pot has been sitting empty for several years, I used the sea soil as is.

Fill up the bottom of the strawberry pot with the sea soil until you are just below the first level of open pockets at the very bottom. I used one hand to cover the pipe while my other hand scooped in the soil. You don’t want to fill up the pipe with soil. In hindsight, I could’ve stuffed it with a paper towel or something similar, but regardless, you don’t want dirt to fall in.

To insert a strawberry plant, first remove it from the little bedding pot that it came in. You’ll probably see all the roots tangled up in the shape of the pot. Gently loosen that up so that the roots can stretch out once in the pot. Then I wrapped my hand around the base of the plant. The excess dirt in the top part of the plant fell off.

Then take the strawberry plant down the top centre hole of your pot and guide it out of the little hole on the side. I find that by holding on to the base of the plant it was slightly easier to manoeuver. To be honest, I felt like I was really man-handling the plants. With one hand on the inside, holding it by the base and trying to push it out the hole, my other hand was on the outside trying to pull it out. Make sure you get all the stems out. Good thing they seem to be tough and were able to withstand the tugging. Basically, your strawberry plant is oriented sideways so that it can poke out the little hole.

Once you have all the plants planted at that level, add more soil. Be sure to fill in around the plants you just planted. Work your way up to the next level. Repeat the process with the plants. Keep manipulating that centre pipe as you go so that it is centred.

Continue until you have filled up all the side pockets and are left with just the top. Since the opening at the top is bigger, I put 3 plants on the top. Finish your pot off with more soil.

Okay, so my strawberry pot had 9 side holes and the top hole. So that’s 12 plants in this strawberry pot! Talk about a space-saver!

One Last Thing

Okay, this is what really makes me feel like a gardener. It’s to fertilize the plants. I have literally never fertilized anything in our yard, even though I know I should. It always felt like such a chore to do.

But the gardening store recommended a fertilizer that is a top dressing, called Garden Pro. I just sprinkle some on top and that’s it. No mixing! This is too easy. To top it off, this fertilizer lasts for 4 months! That means, by the time it comes around to fertilize again, the growing season will be over, and I won’t need to fertilize! How easy is that? I guess things have come a long way since I last did any actual gardening.

I have to say that the strawberry pot is quite a show-stopper. It’s so lovely to see all the plants peeking through. Since I started late (real gardeners don’t wait until June to plant strawberries – just me), a number of the plants I bought already had strawberries on them. Look how cute they are!

See how easy that was? It really just took part of an afternoon to put this together. Let’s hope I can keep it alive!

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