10 Easy DIY Ways to Grow Strawberries for Big Harvests in Small Spaces: Strawberry Pallet Gardens and More!

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Strawberries are delicious when they’re fresh off the plant and yes, you can grow them directly in the ground if you have enough space. But if space is limited, you won’t get many berries unless you get creative with your strawberry planting. Plus, planting strawberries at ground level is like ringing the dinner bell for every pest in a 5-mile radius.

We’ve put together some of the best, easy DIY ways to plant strawberries for big harvests even in small spaces. Check out these ideas and choose the one that suits your garden best.

Each method is low-cost and will help you maximize your fruit yield when growing strawberries organically. 

Because you’ll also be repurposing or reusing common throw-away items, you’ll also be getting a little bit greener, too.

1. Grow Strawberries in Pallets

Creating a strawberry pallet garden is easy. Really easy. 

You can get hold of old (or new) wooden pallets pretty much anywhere. Often, shops or construction sites will allow you to take them away for free. 

And pallets make an awesome home for strawberries. There’s a couple of different methods. 

You can simply place the pallet on the ground, fill it with soil, and plant your strawberries, which helps keep the fruit raised off the wet earth. But it doesn’t help much with pests, so you’ll still need to provide pest protection. 

The second method involves creating a vertical strawberry garden. Take a pallet, cover the back and sides with landscape fabric (this is the fabric I use), then fill the pallet with soil. Plant your strawberries between the slats.

Let the pallet sit on the ground for a couple of weeks so that the soil settles and the strawberries start to root. Then carefully stand the pallet upright and attach it to a wall, fence, or a couple of well-seated stakes. 

And bam, you’ve got your very own wall of strawberries – a vertical strawberry pallet garden.

It’s easy to net to keep birds off, and it’s a great way of getting a high yield of strawberries from a small space. What could be better than a vertical garden full of strawberries? 

You can add drip irrigation lines for even watering to make life easier, too.

2. Grow Strawberries in a Shopping Cart

This is a ridiculously easy way to grow strawberries organically. You frequently find those large shopping carts from the grocery store abandoned. 

They get dumped by the side of the street, in woodland, in wasteland, and all too often in rivers, lakes, and waterways. So they’re easy to get hold of. Plus you’ll be helping to clean up your local environment.

Growing strawberries in a shopping cart is a particularly good option if you experience harsh winters, as you can simply wheel the cart full of strawberries under cover for the winter months. 

If the cart is made from a fine mesh, you can simply fill it full of good quality topsoil and plant your strawberries on top and all around the sides.

If, however, the cart has larger holes in it, you’ll need some porous weed suppressant or hessian cloth. Line the cart with your fabric, then fill it up with soil. 

Plant the top of the trolley with strawberry plants, then use a sharp knife to carefully cut the fabric along the sides where you want to place more plants.

3. Grow Strawberries in Old Tires

Classed as environmental waste in many areas, old tires are always readily available. 

Because of the ever-tightening restrictions on how environmental waste is disposed of, many businesses have to pay a properly registered company to take away and destroy their old tires. 

So, if you turn up at a car repair shop or tire fitter’s, they’ll most likely jump for joy when you ask if you can take away some of their old, useless tires.

You can use tires of any size, from standard car tires to giant tractor tires. Make sure you give them a thorough wash with hot soapy water and a stiff brush (this one is easy to hold and it has very stiff bristles) to remove any chemicals and road debris. 

You don’t want any nasties leaching their way into your plants.

If you’re not too bothered by appearances, simply fill each tire with soil and plant your strawberries. You can go as simple or as elaborate as you like. 

If you want something a little prettier or want a fun outdoor project with the kids, once the tires are clean and dry, paint them. Create colorful murals and pretty patterns – whatever you like.

You can simply put a single tire on the ground and plant your strawberries directly in the middle, or, to maximize space, stack the tires, carefully anchoring each one to the one below. 

Then fill with soil. Cut holes at regular intervals around each tire in the stack, and plant your strawberries in each hole. 

Growing strawberries in tires is cheap and insanely easy. And is another easy way of creating a vertical strawberry garden.

4. Guttering or PVC Pipe

Quick, easy, and effective, guttering or PVC pipe doesn’t cost much and lets you maximize your strawberry crop while saving space and helping to deter pests. 

There’s lots of different configurations to choose from – you can attach the pipe to fencing to make use of otherwise wasted space, or you can get a bit more creative and rig up a chest-high frame constructed entirely of PVC, and fill to the brim with strawberries.

Once you’ve decided where you want your plants and how big your structure will be, get the pipe or gutter in place. 

Then, if you’ve gone for full gutter or PVC pipe, cut small round holes along the length, pack it with soil, and plant the strawberries. You can also install a drip line (we find this one easy to cut and very flexible) for easy, even watering.

If you’re using half pipe, rig up the guttering, fill with good quality compost, then plant your strawberries. 

The options with guttering or PVC pipe are endless – attach long stretches of guttering to fences, rig up tall, vertical strawberry gardens, hang multiple pieces of guttering one above the other to maximize space.

5. Plastic Barrels

Grow strawberries in plastic barrels by simply washing the barrel inside and out. Cut small holes at regular intervals, pack the barrel with topsoil, and plant. It’s that easy.

This simple but effective way of growing strawberries in a small space lets you provide plenty of high-quality soil and compost for your strawberries to root into and feed on. 

This means, while you will still need to carefully manage the soil, you’ll need to add less of your homemade organic fertilizer and less frequently, too.

6. A Well-Protected Strawberry Patch

A good old-fashioned strawberry patch is a perfectly good choice if you’ve got the space and if you can protect it. Make sure you use good quality soil, of course. And be sure to space your strawberries adequately – you need to leave 16-24 inches between plants and 36 inches between rows. 

This leaves plenty of room for your runners to spread and transplant themselves if you decide to let the bed run a little wild for easy maintenance. Check our strawberry growing guide for full growing instructions.

Find out why your strawberry leaves are curling here.

I strongly recommend making a frame around the strawberry patch and covering it with chicken wire or netting. Just remember that the mesh needs to be fine enough to keep mice out but big enough to let bees and other pollinators get through easily.

7. Companion Planting Strawberries

Strawberries don’t help many other plants, but they can be helped by companion plants. Just remember that unless you keep the runners in check, they’ll quickly spread and can crowd out or steal nutrients from other plants. 

Borage is one of the best companion plants for strawberries. It attracts pollinators and deters many of the pests that normally prey on strawberries. It also attracts predatory insects that devour any strawberry pests that aren’t deterred by the presence of borage. 

Borage also enhances the flavor of strawberries and can increase yield. So if you’re only going to interplant one species with your strawberries, it should be borage.

Bush beans repel numerous strawberry-loving beetles and also hold large numbers of nitrogen-fixing bacteria on and around their roots, which increases available nitrogen in the soil, providing natural fertilizer for your strawberries.

Lupins are beautiful and are also another nitrogen-fixing plant. Plus, their bright, pretty flowers attract pollinators.

Carraway is another solid choice to draw in predatory insects that eat strawberry pests.

You can learn more about companion planting here.

8. Grow Strawberries In Hanging Baskets

Strawberries grow well in hanging baskets as long as you give them adequate water and food. Ideally, use a roomy hanging basket that’s at least 12 inches deep (15 inches is better). These ones are ideal. 

Line your basket. I tend to use coco coir, but you can use moss, too. You can even buy hanging basket liners like these ones. Lining the basket helps it retain water to keep the plants properly hydrated between waterings. 

Fill the basket with a high-quality potting compost. For hanging baskets, I like this compost because it retains water well. 

An average-sized hanging basket can accommodate 4 to 6 plants. It’s always best to under-plant than over-plant. If you crowd them, the strawberry plants will struggle to get enough food, moisture, and room to thrive and they’ll either die off or produce very little fruit. 

Space the strawberry plants around the basket. But don’t just plant them in the top – plant them through the sides so that the plants stick out and the fruit will hang as it grows.

As long as you water and feed them regularly (see our post on easy, free organic fertilizers), you’ll have a bountiful hanging strawberry garden that produces year after year.

9. Grow Strawberries Hydroponically

Hydroponic strawberry gardens are gaining in popularity. The idea is that you skip the soil and instead grow with nutrient-rich water instead. Hydroponic growing is great for strawberries because there are no soil-borne pests or diseases, it’s water-efficient because the water is re-circulated, and you can set this up vertically if you’re short on space. And, it’s easy! 

You can build your own hydroponic system or you can buy a good starter set, like this ebb and flow deep water culture one. 

You’ll also need growing media, like coco coir, rockwool, grow stones, or other hydroponic growth media. And, for the best results, you’ll need some hydroponic nutrients – I recommend these 100% natural organic ones. I don’t recommend non-organic ones, because you don’t want synthetic products being absorbed by plants whose fruits you’ll eat. 

You can grow hydroponic strawberries from seeds, but it’s not that easy, so I’d recommend getting some young plants, instead. Set your strawberry plants in your growing medium in net pots.

Make sure you keep the temperature between 65 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit and provide 8 to 12 hours of light per day. The water pH needs to remain between 5.8 and 6.2. For a more complete guide to growing hydroponic strawberries, check out this post by Epic Gardening.

10. Raised Strawberry Beds

You can grow strawberries in raised beds as easily as any other crops. And in raised beds, it’s very easy to interplant or companion plant, too. You can get raised bed kits to make waist-high planters to eliminate much of the bending and back pain associated with working in the garden. 

Alternatively there are kits to build raised beds close to ground level. You can also build your own easily, even if you don’t have advanced DIY skills. Any scrap lumber, old pallets, railway sleepers – most wood scraps can be turned into raised beds.

You can also try your hand at building a hugelkultur – a no-dig mounded bed that holds moisture, builds long-term fertility, and improves soil structure. 

There are lots of choices here, and it’s up to you to decide which one is best for your space. Just remember, whatever type of raised bed you choose, you’ll need to take the same precautions as with a standard strawberry patch – use companion planting to deter pests and keep your plants healthy, and make sure you use netting or chicken wire frames to keep out birds and rodents.

Other Uses for Vertical Strawberry Gardens

Now, I’ve covered vertical gardens in detail right here, so there’s no need to repeat the information. However, I will just say that strawberries work exceptionally well in vertical gardens. The fruit hangs beautifully and you get a high yield from a very small footprint.

All of these options work well for a whole host of other plants. Anything that tumbles or trails is a particularly good choice – like tumbling tomatoes, for example. You can also grow salad vegetables using any of the above methods.

Tire stacks are an awesome way to grow potatoes. You get a big yield if you add more soil and additional tires as the leafy portion of the plant grows. The tubers just keep multiplying and quickly fill a stack of 6 to 8 tires.

They’re also super easy to harvest, as you simply lift off a tire each time you want to grab some fresh spuds. You can grow pretty much anything in a shopping cart – even root veg like carrots and beets – so it’s a useful option if you have problems with moles or ground squirrels.

Problems With Planting Strawberries Directly in Open Ground

Aside from destruction from rats, mice, squirrels, slugs, birds, and just about every other fruit-loving pest you can think of, when you grow strawberries in the ground, you’ve got limited control of water and soil quality.

If you have a prolonged wet period after the fruit sets, for example, there’s a good chance that a large portion of your ripening fruit will rot where it touches the wet earth or the wet straw that you lovingly pack around the plants.

So Many Ways to Grow Strawberries!

There are so many different ways to grow strawberries – and almost any other edible plant with repurposed items – these are just a few of our favorites.

We’d love to hear how you guys grow strawberries – or anything else for that matter. Leave us a comment or send us a pic!

FAQs

Any of the methods listed in this post are great ways to grow strawberries. Our favorites are tire stacks, growing strawberries in pallets, strawberry hydroponic gardens, and guttering. You can find out how to grow strawberries from scraps here, too.

As we’ve demonstrated, strawberries are pretty tough little plants that can grow in anything and anywhere as long as you can provide adequate light, food, and water. Grow strawberries in pallets, buckets, hanging baskets, barrels, clean tires, strawberry planters, hydroponic systems, raised beds, guttering, and more. 

Anything that’s clean and roomy. Clean barrels are great. You can cut pockets around the sides, fill the barrels with compost, and plant into each of the cutouts. Guttering is great for strawberries because it’s so versatile. You can cut holes in long pipes and grow them vertically or rig up half pipes at a convenient height and plant straight into them. The choices for strawberry planting containers are limitless.

The best place to plant strawberries is somewhere reasonably sheltered that gets at least 8 to 12 hours of sunlight per day. Make sure the soil is nutrient-rich and drains freely, too.

In moderation, yes, used coffee grounds are good for strawberry plants. They’re acidic, so any acid-loving plants such as berries and citrus fruits love them. It makes a great form of fertilizer for strawberries. But be careful – using too much too often can make your soil too acidic and unbalance your soil’s pH. So use with caution.

Brassicas! Cabbages, kale, broccoli and others in the same family should never be planted near strawberries because strawberries inhibit the grow of plants in the cabbage family. 

Additionally, strawberries should never be planted with other plants that are highly susceptible to verticillium wilt. These include 

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Eggplant
• Peppers
• Squash
• Pumpkin
• Melon

Yes! Strawberries grow well in pots. Just make sure you give them enough food and water.

Yes! A clean 5-gallon bucket is a good choice of container for strawberries. GIve them plenty of water, food, and sunlight. And make sure you put holes in the bottom of the bucket so excess water can drain away.

It depends on your container. As a general rule, you can grow three plants per foot of soil. Any more than this, and your plants won’t grow well and won’t produce as much fruit. 

The best time to plant strawberries is after the risk of frost has passed. This is usually in early spring. Late March to early April is the best time to plant strawberries in the Northern hemisphere.