How to Plant Herbs in a Strawberry Pot

Inspired by my new found confidence in planting that strawberry pot, I thought it manageable to try another gardening project. Here’s how to plant herbs in a strawberry pot.

Even though I do not consider myself to be a gardener, I’ve been using my time at home to branch out a bit and give it a shot.

Have you checked out my last post where I planted a strawberry pot? It was actually not as hard as I thought. It was definitely manageable. Let’s hope I can keep it alive! Check out my blog post, How to Plant a Strawberry Pot that has tips on choosing plants, as well as a tip on how to water this type of pot.

So I had this really cute, little strawberry pot sitting in my yard. I’ve had it for years. I don’t recall if I every planted anything in it, but I must have. I remember buying it at a gardening store because it was just so cute.

To be honest, this little strawberry pot has been sitting on my deck to hold gardening gloves and small hand tools. After making the big strawberry pot, I thought I would plant this one too, but with herbs.

This little strawberry pot only has 3 little side holes for plants and then has a top centre hole.. Strawberry pots come in all sizes. The pot that I have actual strawberries in has 9 side holes.

How to Choose Herbs for Your Strawberry Pot

Just like when picking strawberry plants, there are some things you may wish to consider when picking herbs.

Pick herbs that you will actually use. For me, there’s no point in planting herbs that I wouldn’t cook with. So I thought of herbs that I would actually use – rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme and parsley. I know these are all pretty basic herbs. Feel free to customize your pot using herbs that you like to use. It might as well be practical.
Other possibilities include tarragon and sage.
However, don’t let my need for practicality discourage you in your choice of herbs, Something can be said for herbs to just look nice in your pot, as well as offer some nice decoration or fragrance to your garden. Maybe having something different will inspire your cooking. I think I’m just too practical for that. We don’t have a lot of space in our garden, so whatever plant I pick has to have a purpose.
Consider the size of the plants. I opted for compact varieties of some of these herbs. Some herbs can grow quite big and take over – like mint, for instance. My local gardening store offered some compact varieties of thyme and oregano which I thought would be perfect.

As this strawberry pot is quite small, I only needed 4 plants. In the end, I chose thyme, oregano, curly leaf parsley and rosemary.

How to Plant Herbs in a Strawberry Pot

Considering the size of this strawberry pot, drainage was not an issue. I simply covered the bottom with rocks so that excess water could easily drain out without taking all the soil with it.

As with my strawberry pot, I used sea soil in this pot. It was recommended to me by my local gardening store. As I really don’t consider myself to be a gardener, I rely on the knowledge and recommendations of the staff in the gardening store. Lucky for me, we have a few good gardening stores where we live, that have helpful staff and didn’t mind answering all my questions. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. That’s how we learn.

Add soil to the bottom of the strawberry pot until you reach the first level of holes. Remove the herbs from the little pots they came in. You’ll see that the roots are all tightly would around the bottom. Gently loosen that so the roots can stretch out and grow in your pot.

Put your herb down the centre hole and from the inside, push it out the little side hole. It will definitely take a bit of man-handling and manipulation. The plants seem to take it okay so don’t worry. You basically have to push it out from the inside with one hand while pulling it through the hole with the other hand on the outside.

You are basically planting the herbs sideways so that they can stick out the side holes. You will want to pick herbs that can handle this. Certain plants would probably not like this at all. Herbs like rosemary are best planted at the very top.

Once you have filled up all the holes in this level with your herbs, add more soil to fill it in. If your strawberry pot is larger, you’ll want to keep going in the same manner as how I planted my strawberry pot.

Once you have completed the side holes, all you have left to do is to plant the top centre hole. I chose to put my rosemary plant in there as it not only takes up my space but grows better in an upright manner. I actually already had the rosemary plant. I just transferred it from another pot into this strawberry pot.

Last But Not Least

To finish it off, I added some top-dressing fertilizer to the pot. This is a slow-release fertilizer that just requires you to sprinkle on the top. It lasts for 4 months! So I won’t need to fertilize this until mid-fall. It’s so easy to do.

The little herb pot turned out quite cute. It sits on our deck, right outside our back door so I can easily snip off what I need when cooking. This area is also where we get the most sun.