Last year about this time I began a series of posts saying that using
standard concrete block 16"x8"x8' with their 2 holes are great for
garden plants in that they protect the plant, reduce weeds and grass, so
much easier to plant without ever using a rototiller, easy to mow,
easier to water and always easy to locate.

One problem I did encounter last year was that I did not make the
concrete block rows continuous where no gaps between one block and the
next on down a line. This year I make them continuous for it is easier
to mow and just run the mower along the side of the block and that no
grass or weeds grow in between the gaps.
So this year I made them all contiguous rows.

But I want to try this method out especially this year on strawberries.
For the last 3 years I have had to constantly weed out the strawberry
patches but the brome and quack grasses have heavily infested the
patches.

So what I want to do is to make rows of concrete block and transplant a
single strawberry in each hole. Anxious because I am curious as to
whether the strawberry will thrive since it must grow higher than normal
and that it cannot easily send out lateral sister plant runners. If they
thrive in concrete blocks then they will be a breeze to weed because
weeds and grasses do not easily grow
in those holes because of the enormous shade and thus I will have
conquered the weeding of strawberries. But I do not know if the runners
will make it.

So this is a special year to experiment with strawberries via concrete
block method. This method makes gardening 100 times easier because the
block act as if it was a pot itself.

I can plant a row of tomatoes in concrete blocks of 72 plants in less
than 2 hours whereas the old method of tilling etc etc took 4 hours.

There is one drawback to concrete block method and that some ants can
colonize around a block. So what I have done to address this problem is
that I lay the thinnest edge of the block on the ground, whereas the
thicker edge attracts ants.
Ants are a huge problem for gardens.

Another problem is that robins often uproot potted plants. One summer I
was planting a lot of alpine strawberries I had started in peatmoss
plugs and I spent a morning planting them and when I returned in the
afternoon, robins had uprooted nearly the entire bed. But in concrete
block gardening, robins do not poke their heads down into those holes,
or at least I have never seen them.

So this year I hope to solve the yearly strawberry weeding tantrums. I
would guess the strawberries will thrive in those holes by just growing
a longer stems
and if any grasses manage to come it is so much easier to control them.
But I am uncertain if the runners will thrive. Perhaps they will thrive
and at the end of the summer I can go down the row of block, snip the
runners and plant them into a new row of block.

I am hopeful that the concrete block method will be the ultimate best
method of growing strawberries.

By the way, since I use the block to build buildings, that whenever I
need more block for buildings I just take them from the field, wash them
and put them into the building. So I keep concrete block extras serving
either as gardening or when need be, for building a new building.

Archimedes Plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom where dots
of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies
www.archimedesplutonium.com
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium