Make An Old-Time Strawberry Barrel

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If all the bother of starting strawberries from seed does not appeal, you can order a 25-plant bundle of runner-grown strawberry plants for each barrel. Chose the day-neutral or everbearing variety best suited to your climate; see store or catalog descriptions, as new varieties are being developed every year. W. Atlee Burpee recommends the day-neutral variety Tristar for barrel culture.

Both seed-grown and live everbearing and day-neutral varieties will produce a small crop the late summer and fall of their planting year and then produce throughout the growing season the next year and for several years more before they should be replaced with clones from new seed, plant divisions, or their own runners.

Setting Out

Get a barrel full of rich compost from your own pile or mix a batch using screened, rock-free top soil mixed 4:1 with a soil conditioner such as vermiculite, and liberal amounts of the natural plant nutrients cottonseed and bone meal, greensand and lime. Do not add much lime unless your soil is very acidic. Soil should be neutral, with a pH of seven.

Set the bottom barrel half on the base, assuring that it rests level and firm. Trim the perforated pipe so it is 1 1/2 times the height of a half-barrel (only 2/3 the height of the completed barrel). Wrap the pipe in several thicknesses of window screen, set bottom of pipe in the center hole in the base, securing it with soil packed around firmly. Add more soil, packing it around the pipe. When you reach planting holes, inset plants with roots splayed out on the soil in a fan shape and with crown and leaves projecting beyond the inner surface of the barrel. Insert a wood chip or flat rock to block top of planting hole above each plant crown to keep soil from flowing out during heavy rains that can soak the soil in early spring before plants' root systems are well established. Pack soil especially well around roots.

Set the top half of the barrel on the bottom. Equidistant round the seam, sink three- or four-inch lengths of hardwood into the soil in the bottom half. Put screws through the outside of top-half slats and into the wood cleats. This will keep the top from slipping off the bottom.

Add soil and plants till you get to the top of the central drain pipe. Cover with a slate or thin shale split or several thicknesses of window screen to keep soil from draining through.

In the six inches of soil in the barrel's top, set one berry plant in the center and space three or four more around the rim.

Care

Keep watered till spring rains arrive, pinch off spring blooms and runners to encourage root growth ...and by August you can begin harvesting as much fruit from a barrel as you'd get from a 25-foot row of garden.

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