When will this stop? LOL. I am converting a 16 foot section of the yard to a dedicated raised bed strawberry garden. There will be four 3 ft wide x 4 ft long x 12 inch tall steel beds. We are moving these from a different part of the yard so we can redesign that area.

I went to my local garden center, The Growing Place, in Naperville, IL, since they were having a 50% off sale on their fruit plants. I originally went to get a blueberry bush, more on that later, and I saw the strawberry plants.

I bought 3 ‘Ozark Beauty’ plants.

They have a lot of runners so I am hoping they take off and fill up my beds.

I planted them in the raised bed and surrounded them with a fine, pine bark mulch.

Once they were surrounded with the fine mulch I covered the whole bed with pine bark mini nuggets. This combination gives them plenty of mulch protection and over time the fine mulch will disintegrate and provide nutrients to the soil.

This is what they look like after planting. The white pail in the middle is for my worm farm. The empty bed at the bottom is for the next group of strawberries. The cardboard is to help kill the grass.

Hopefully I will have lots of strawberries next year.

9-10-2024

This is what they look like now. Hopefully a lot of the runners will root and spread!