Strawberry Engineering

In a catch-up post from last week, I described my strawberry planting saga. I didn't mention my watering and drainage system in that post, so I'll do it here.

Strawberries can be planted in regular old pots, but that's no fun considering that there are these really cute strawberry planters with little pockets on the sides to accomodate new runners.

A typical terra cotta strawberry pot

The problem with strawberry pots is when you water the plants from above, the water often leaks out of the little pockets. This happens a lot early on when the pockets are relatively empty, before the plants and runners take up the room.
So, when you first plant strawberries in a strawberry pot, you have to create a little watering and drainage system. Most books and websites speaking to the issue recommend you purchase some PVC pipe and drill holes in it. I don't have a drill and didn't want to buy one for this purpose. So, I improvised.

Since I own one of those cord chewing cats, I have a lot of those plastic tubes used to protect electrical cords around the condo.  See a specimen below:

I cut one into two pieces, each the height of my strawberry pots, and then cut holes in them at various intervals. This was easily done with a sissors since these tubes are a lot thiner and easier to cut into than PVC pipe would be. Then, I taped off one end with duct tape and put the tube into the pot with the taped end down. Then, I planted the strawberry plants and placed the dirt around the tube.

You can see the result below:

Strawberry pot with watering hole

Now, I water the strawberry plants by pouring the water into the tube. Then, I water a bit on top to make sure that the soil on the top gets watered as well.

A variation on this theme, and the option I chose for my larger strawberry pot, is to cut the tube to the heights of the pot, but don't cut the side holes into it. Place the tube inside the pot and place the strawberry plants and dirt around it until it stands up straight. Then fill the tube with small river rocks. When the tube is full, pull it out leaving the rocks. Then, you can water into the rocks and the water will run down them to the plants and into the pockets.

If you look closely, you can see the river rock
drainage system from the top of this
strawberry pot

What I learned:

1. There is more than one way to skin a cat and create a watering system for strawberry pots.