Saturday 23 May 2015

... work has begun on the strawberry patch

Good evening everyone,

We began work in earnest today on the strawberry patch. Massive amount of work. 

I removed all the tarps and the cardboard underneath. A lot of the cardboard was badly rotting so we will just haul it away to the dump rather than try to reuse it. There was still some weeds growing underneath so I dug them out.


Frank began to build the raised beds. We chose to use hemlock that we bought from a local company who milled it for us. We were told that it would last for ages as it is very rot resistant. The wood is actual 2 x 8's as it has not been planed. It is also unbelievably heavy.

Frank cut all the wood and then we hauled it into the garden in the back of the pickup truck. We are making a series of beds in three rows. Two of them are 16 feet long and a smaller center bed is 6 feet long. All are 3 feet wide. There is a small one foot wide path between the beds. There will be a two foot wide path between the rows. We will grow a different variety of berry in each of the rows.

After Frank make each bed I lay down a couple layers of paper in the bottom, then a layer of landscape fabric. Strawberries are very shallow rooted plants so the landscape fabric will help to control the weeds that may try to make their way into the bed and since the beds are a full 8 inches deep it will never bother the strawberry plants. Then the beds were filled in with triple mix, right to the top, as the soil will settle to a lower level after a short while. 


We managed to get one full row of beds done and filled and got two additional beds built.


This was a completely exhausting day for us both and unfortunately there will be more of the same tomorrow. We are aiming to get the beds finished tomorrow and then we will plant them out on Monday, fingers crossed.

Thanks so much for visiting. Have a great weekend. Cheers.


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