Growing Strawberries in a Raised Strawberry Bed

Everyone loves raised beds, and everyone loves strawberries, and a raised strawberry bed offers the best of both worlds. The berries cascade over the sides, and the added height makes makes growing and picking strawberries easy.

How to Grow Strawberries

An individual strawberry plant is a perennial that will produce strawberries reliably for about three years. In the course of that time, the mother strawberry plant not only produces an abundance of sweet berries, she grows many “runners”, or stems (actually called “stolons”) that grow outward and each produce a whole new plant. 

To keep a strawberry bed productive indefinitely requires careful management of the mother and daughter plants. The daughter plants should be allowed to root in and grow, while the parent plant should be dug up and composted after its three-year productive lifespan. It’s a bit of an artform to know which plants to let grow and which to remove, and to keep the spacing between plants at about 6”.

If left alone, strawberries will spread all over and fill in the entire space in one thick carpet, spilling over the edges of the bed and trying to take over the world. This wouldn’t be a problem except that when they get old or crowded, they produce very few berries.

Raised Strawberry Bed This 3-tier raised  bed is perfect for harvesting strawberries as they spill over the sides.

The biggest advantage of a raised strawberry bed is ease of access for the work of both harvesting and thinning. And if you also consider “beauty” an advantage, you can add the joy of seeing the berries hanging over the edges of the bed. A raised strawberry bed can be made out of any of the traditional styles of raised bed frames:  stacked 4x4s screwed together with lag screws 2x6s on edge screwed into 4x4 legs at the corners 2x6s or 2x8s attached at the corner with manufactured raised bed corners cinder blocks or landscape pavers stacked up a half whiskey barrel

Click any image or link shown to browse a great selection of beautiful ready-to-plant raised beds and planters that are perfect for growing strawberries!

Fairfield All-Weather UV-Resistant Planter This durable planter is gorgeous with strawberries spilling  over the side!

Farmstead Cedar Raised Bed This is my #1 all-time favorite raised bed. 3 minutes to assemble, 20 years to love!

Wooden VegTrug Patio Planter This beautiful wooden planter has a rot-proof plastic bottom for years of use.

Click below to learn more about growing strawberries in raised beds:

• Raised Bed Gallery
  A photo gallery showcase of raised bed designs, with descriptions of construction details.
  
  
• Growing Strawberries
  How to grow strawberries, including types, soil conditions, and propagation.

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