Strawberry Planter Project

At the start of the year I bought 30 bare root strawberry plants for the excellent price of £11.50! When they arrived I potted them  on into some small pots to grow on. They have soon out grown these and I have been in need of potting them on. For one of the varieties I had made a couple of window box type planters from old pallets, but for the rest I was short of something to put them in. I have looked at the various strawberry planters to buy but none of them really took my fancy and their cost outweighed their utility.

On hunting around the garden and shed I came across a length of 4 inch diameter waste pipe and decided that this would be perfect. This is what it turned out like....

So thats what it looks like as a finished item, and I have to say I was feeling pleased with myself. Its not beautiful but it certainly does the job, and the only thing  paid for were two large jubilee clips. On a design level what I was looking for was something portable, cheap and easy for propagating runners.

It was very simple to make, its just a pipe after all. But here is how I did it.

I got my 4 inch pipe, my drill and a 32mm drill bit to make the wholes.

The gaps between the wholes are roughly about 4 inches, I didn't measure at all and did it by eye. I did this all away along leaving roughly 4 inches at each end.

This took no time at all to do, it would take anyone with a better drill than me even less time. With all the wholes in it was time to think about how it was going to sit. Originally I wanted to hang it from the fence but decided against it. My other solution was one I made whilst drilling the wholes and this was what i came up with....

Simple really, the cut out from the pip screwed to 2x2 piece of wood made a perfect stand. As you can imagine I was patting myself on my back for sometime with this little bit of ingenuity. My partner did not share my delight in what I had done, so I showed my like minded neighbour who gave me the praise I thought I deserved!!!I made three of these and they hold the pipe perfectly.

Once all this was done I made the ends, I looked at getting real pipe end caps but the cost of these was to high even on ebay so some black polythene jubilee clipped on was the cheaper better option for me.

Well that's it really, it works. There is one thing that I will add when I replant in a year or so, a watering system of some kind that runs through the pipe. at the moment the water runs of alot. But it will do for now.