| It's strawberry planting time around here, and I just got my strawberries planted. To give them a nice, sunny location, we removed a four foot by six foot part of our patio. (When I say "we," I really mean "my boyfriend.") Then we dug up a foot of soil, loosened up the soil below it, and filled our 1-foot-deep hole back in with soil, mixing in a one inch thick layer of compost and some coffee grounds as we went. We had our soil tested recently and we've got enough organic matter in the soil (5%), a good pH (6.7), and high levels of phosphorus and potassium. Where we lack is nitrogen and - although the test didn't say it - soil life. You can dig and dig and hardly find any worms - and no bugs at all! I've got no idea what we've got in the way of microbes but I doubt it's optimal. The compost we added (made from chicken poop and wood chips) will give the soil some biodiversity, as well as some nitrogen. The coffee grounds increase the acidity (6.7 is slightly acidic and great for most plants, but strawberries like a pH of 6 or even lower).
Then - we planted our strawberries! We have 12 plants of 2 varieties of strawberries that grow well around here - Chandler and Sequoia. I want to try companion planting, so I left room in the middle for a borage plant (a circle with a 15" diameter) and then put a line of poles for green beans down the middle. (I'm going to remove them because, as it turns out, strawberries should be companion planted with bush beans not pole beans - oops!) Then I planted 3 strawberry plants in each quadrant of the bed, giving each strawberry a 6" of space on all sides (i.e. the strawberries are 12" from one another). Last, I added spinach in between the two groups of three strawberries on one side and lettuce on the other.
I can fit some more lettuce in the corners, but I will plant it later. Leaf lettuce matures in 6-10 weeks and has a short harvest period. Spinach has a longer harvest period. Therefore, I don't want to plant all of my lettuce at once so I can have a continual supply to eat in salads as it grows.
Here's the result:
The spinach side:
The lettuce side:
More on companion planting and plant spacing below. |
| Each of the plants in this patch were selected because they grow well with strawberries. Also, none of them are antagonists to one another. Both bush beans and onions grow well with strawberries, but beans and onions don't grow well together.
About borage:
Borage is traditionally grown in cottage gardens, both as a culinary herb and because bees loves the flowers, yielding an excellent honey.
It is a good companion plant and mulch for most plants, being an excellent source of minerals, especially calcium and potassium. In particular , borage and strawberries help each other and strawberry farmers always set a few plants in their beds to enhance the fruits flavour and yield. Borage is also a good companion for tomatoes - both seem to improve in growth and disease resistance when planted near each other.
Plant spacing:
Strawberries: 12"
Spinach: 6"
Lettuce: 8" in winter, 9" the rest of the year
Green Beans: 6"
Borage: 15"
Strawberries and borage: 13.5"
Spinach and strawberries: 9"
Lettuce and strawberries: 10" winter, 10.5" rest of the year
Green beans and strawberries: 9"
Borage and green beans: 10.5"
Borage and spinach: 10.5"
Borage and lettuce: 11.5" winter, 12" rest of the year
Green beans and spinach: 6"
Green beans and lettuce: 7" winter, 7.5" rest of the year |
