The Strawberry Planter

I said I'd blog about the strawberry planter so here it is. Just to give a little background here, our home is in woodland with only the area around the house cleared. Like pioneers on a frontier mission, we have been pushing our way into the woods to make more space for gardens.

Some years ago a humungous dead pine with a double trunk was cut down. This baby was huge and had been leaning just slightly toward the house and could have fallen on it. So down she went. And for whatever reason or the entire lack of one, it was not taken off to some landfill. (But the loggers were good and trimmed off all the branches). 

The double trunks now covered in strawberry plants.

Having this tree down opened up some potential space for gardening, but unfortunately the whole bulky thing of it was in the way. Over several years I kept stacking heaps of brush trimmings, rose prunings, and other likeminded rubbish between the two big trunks of the monster pine. I mean why not, the trunks held the stuff in place. As things were added I’d get in there and tromp it all down. Finally it was all filled in, all the way to the top. 

Hmm, I said, NOW what to do with this? Wasn’t quite sure but it seemed like a bright idea might be to toss some dirt up onto it. So on went the dirt. And then of course, dirt means plant something, so I thought of strawberries. Why strawberries? Because they put out those little runner babies which are persistant little buggers. Those things can root themselves into some pretty tough dirt. 

And so I imagined the roots squiggling their way into the big fat trunks of that log. Gradually the log rots into dirt and the whole thing is ... what, compost? Works for me! So then I was all inspired to get this going and put in the strawberries. To further promote the idea I stacked dirt all around the outside making sloping hillsides up to the two trunks. I figured that with more dirt the log might rot faster plus get me more planting space on the hillsides.  

A strawberry rooted into the log.

There’s a lot going on with that planter now. The wood is breaking down- it's getting mushy. Mossy and fungusy things are growing on it. Strawberry runners are rooting into it as planned. Chipmunk lives somewhere inside of it (probably tunneled into all that brush that’s in there), AND it adds a funny looking hlll to the area. Not that we NEED more hills, we already have a few of those.

So that's the deal with the strawberry planter. I guess the moral of the story might be that a piece of wood in the yard can be put to use. With a little imagination.   -jmm