Swing low, sweet strawberries…

Strawberries being planted in a hanging bag

One of the many problems faced by people with very small urban gardens like mine is that even if you’re lucky, the amount of growing space that you have in full sun is pretty minimal. Because the garden is so small, half of the growing space that I have in my raised beds is darkened by shadows cast by the fences. So I’m having to find ways of maximising the amount of sunny space that I have available. Strawberries are a particular problem. 

The waterlogged berries you buy in supermarkets cannot come close to comparing to the flavour and smell of home-grown berries but the plants themselves don’t need to put roots down deep enough to justify using the space in our raised beds. So although I’m trialling a couple of new climbing strawberries in the raised beds (they’ll climb the trellis mounted on the fences), I’m planting my two dozen normal strawberry and pineberry plants (“Snow white” and “Malling opal” respectively) in a hanging bag thing and a vertical garden hanging pouch, both of which I’ll position on sunny walls. So fingers crossed for a bumper harvest!

Vertical gardening pouches planted up with strawberries and pineberries