Project Strawberry

I was thinking that we might do a project together... I know a lot of you out there love the idea of gardening in theory, but perhaps don't have ideas, or don't know how to put your ideas into practice. So something nice and simple, I thought we'd pop some strawberries into a hanging basket.

A friend of mine, Stacey gave me the idea... she read my post about strawberries, and mentioned that she had heard they prefer to be up off the ground, that in a basket the fruit hangs lower than the leaves and it all looks very pretty.
I chose this plant above to transplant, some tomato plants grew up just behind it, and while it's healthy, it isn't getting enough sun to fruit. You don't have to transplant a strawberry though, the ones you get in pots are fine.

In addition to the strawberries, you'll need a hanging basket. There are all sorts out there, as cheap or expensive as you like. This one is from Crazy Clark's, I went for cheap!

You'll also need some soil, all nice and well drained and crumbly, and some sort of aged manure to mix in. I've used horse manure. Mix the soil and manure in well.

Then get your strawberry, if you are digging one up, get as much of the root system as you can.
Make a well in the middle of your soil/manure mix, pop in your plant and fill soil in around the edges. Make sure the soil is at the same level as the soil the plant was in. Then water it in, I used around 9 litres, and I hung the basket over other plants so they got the run off.
I think the strawberries looked better without the straw, but some of the leaves were touching dirt and I don't think they like that, so in went some straw.

And voila! This is what you'll have... strawberries in a basket... and hopefully soon tons and tons of strawberries hanging over the sides. The only problem I can foresee is watering... I don't love watering, the pump on my water tank is broken and lugging a watering can around is a pain.

After I did the one basket I got excited and did another.

And took some photos...And some more...