Strawberry Fields Forever..

Well, If I can keep the things living through the -30c winters.

We spent the last two days adding a strawberry patch to the side of the Shop. This time of year it gets sun through out the day.

We started by leveling out an area about sixteen feet long to put the railway tie retaining walls in. I pinned the ties down with rebar rods.

I then covered the inside with some heavy plastic tarp that I get from the hardware store. It's the stuff their lumber comes wrapped in from the mill.

We then filled the space with gravel, tamped it down, added a layer of geotextle on top to stop any weeds and put down a couple of inches of sand which we also tamped down. I also added a four inch drain pipe to take away any water draining on the beds from the roof. Then we selected six 18 inch truck tires, cut the tops off and placed them on the sand bed. Filled them with a fairly sandy, loamy mix we had made up previously and then added perlite and peatmoss.

While we were hauling gravel and sand for the bed we also brought down about eight loads to re-gravel the roadway between the shop and the house. No more plank walkways required.
And then the strawberries.

We will paint the pressure treated wood on top with the same stain as the shop. And probably add some water at a later date. I can use it for drip irrigating the strawberries and supplying water to the shop. We will also add some decorative crushed rocks around the tires and some selected "yard rocks", large agates, jaspers, common opal - we're Rock Hounds after all!

Today we install gates. But that's another post.

Comments

Yeoman said…
Hmmm. . .strawberries are great. We used to have a high altitude variety developed by the University of Wyoming, but they fell victim to a kids sandbox a few years later. Man, I wish we had them again.

Great blog site. How far north are you?
Art Blomquist said…
Hi Yeoman, thanks for dropping by. We're at latitude 54, about the middle of British Columbia, around 2500 feet up on a south facing slope.
Yeoman said…
That's a nice spot to live in.

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