I needed to pick up some potting soil to fill up the rest of the grow bags for my container garden, so I stopped by Dan West Garden Center on Saturday morning. While I was looking around, I gave into temptation and bought a flat of strawberries. I got 12 Ozark Beauty plants (which will hopefully produce all season long) and 24 June Bearing plants which should produce only 1 crop. When I got home, I wasn’t quite sure what I would do with them. I considered starting another raised bed, but that was more work and expense than I was prepared for so I opted to put them into some of the 10 gallon Grow Bags I bought a few days ago. According to the square foot gardening guidelines, you can squeeze 4 strawberry plants into a single square foot, so that is the density I used for planting. The grow bags are supposedly large enough for 6 plants. After planting them, I thought they looked a little crowded, but decided to give this plan a shot. I can always transplant some into other containers later on this year.
I did get potting soil also. I decided to try Fafard Ultra Container Mix with Extended Feed. It’s a little more expensive than some of the other products, but it has very good reviews online. It’s made up of half composted bark (pine bark) with the rest consisting of sphagnum peat moss and pearlite. It also contains some extended-release fertilizer and some water-retention crystals to help keep it from drying out (as containers are prone to do). I liked the texture the feel of the mix as I was filling the containers. I’ll know by the end of the season whether or not this was a good investment hahaha
Deltavore 