DIY RAISED STRAWBERRY BED

What do you do when you suddenly wind up with 100 free Strawberry plants?

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Recently, the same generous neighbors who blessed us with our three Muscovy ducks also gave us about 100 free Strawberry plants. Their raised bed was getting too congested, so @mama-pepper and the @little-peppers went over to help thin out the bed.

For their hard work, they were rewarded with all of these wonderful free Strawberry plants!

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Some of the plants were already blooming, even though it is still very early in the year.

Not only were they very generous and blessed us with the plants, but they also told us where some free metal that had been used for raised beds was. Once we purchase our land and lay out the landscaping, we will give them some permanent homes, but for the moment, I don’t want to let these die. Therefore, my goal is just to put them somewhere that they can temporarily use as a home for the next year or so.

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I got off to work gathering what I needed for this project. The raised beds that we were told we could use were very solid, but they were overgrown with years’ worth of weed growth.

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I removed the top layer of weeds down to the roots, which left an ancient soil of sorts.

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This was shoveled into buckets to use elsewhere. It is probably very nutrient deficient, but it can still be used as a filler.

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The metal had just rested upon the frame, so once it was empty, it was easy to remove.

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Once the metal for the raised bed was loaded up I had to grab some more supplies.

The rest of my supplies were rabbit manure, compost, rocks, and pine needles.

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I also grabbed some extra five gallon buckets.

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The five gallon buckets were to be used as a stand. This is a temporary setup, and these buckets should be able to support the bed for much longer than I will need them to.

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Once the metal raised bed was placed on top, I was ready to start filling it.

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The rocks went down first, to help with drainage. Ideally, some sort of gravel would have been best, but I used what was available nearby. The soil itself should have been enough to prevent the wind from tipping this raised bed over, but the rocks will make sure of that.

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Next I added a layer of pine needles. This should also help with drainage by preventing some of the soil from making its way down into the gaps in the rocks, at least to some degree. Pine needles can also make soil more acidic, which many berries prefer, but dried pine needles have little effect on the soil acidity.

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Then I put down a layer of compost.

To add to the quality of the soil available to the Strawberry plants, I added a generous layer of rabbit manure. This manure is a great fertilizer that is readily available to us, and since Rabbit manure is a cold manure, it does not need to be composted prior to use.

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To fill in the rest of bed I mixed the soil originally in the raised bed with some more compost.

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Ideally, I would have spaced these plants out more, but, my only goal right now is to keep these alive until we plant them in the ground later. Just to make it a little better, I actually made two of these beds so the plants would have more space.

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After a good watering to get them started in their new home, we now have two nice Strawberry beds which will get us by until we make something more permanent once we buy our land. I’ll keep you posted on how this one turns out.

Also, I should be posting in the near future about a permanent raised bed that I am building featuring a hugelkultur mound so that my Asparagus seeds have a great place to grow.

As always, I’m @papa-pepper and here’s the proof:

proof-of-strawberries

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