Building a Strawberry Rack For Vertical Gardening

For already two years I had this idea to make a rack for my strawberry plants. I love strawberries and want to grow a lot of them every year. In this video I will show you how to build a vertical gardening strawberry rack so that you can grow a lot of strawberries on a limited amount of space. Have fun watching!

Video transcript:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Tony Needs Hobbies. My name is Tony and in this video I will be making a rack for my strawberry plants and because it’s really nice weather I’m going to do this outside. Have fun watching!

Using SketchUp I made a plan that I will use as a guideline. I will pretty much design the rack on the go. When it’s finished I will edit the plan to how I actually made the rack. I will put it on my website in metric and imperial measurements so no matter what you prefer you can download it and make this rack. It will be made out of impregnated pinewood.

I got two boards for the side panels, two posts and a whole bunch of lumber to make the shelves the wood is impregnated so it is weather and rot resistant and will last for a long time even when exposed to the elements.

I start with constructing the sides by cutting the posts to size after which I cut the lumber that will form the supports for the shelves. I will make five shelves so I need five supports per side. They will all have a different length so that the final shape will be a staircase. Every step will hold one container with strawberry plants.

In this time of social distancing I do not get much exercise. That, and the fact that this piece doesn’t fit in my miter saw is why I decided to cut some of the wood by hand. After cutting I clean the edges with a piece of sandpaper. When all the splinters are removed the shelf supports are going to be attached to the post by means of gluing and screwing. I pre-drill all the holes to prevent the wood from splitting. Also I countersink the holes and I use water resistant wood glue. This is really important because the Netherlands is definitely not a dry country. It gets really wet here now and them and I want this rack to last for years.

When all the supports are attached to the post I repeat this process but now mirrored to end up with the right and the left side. To finish both sides I attach the board at a 45-degree angle by gluing and screwing it to the shelf supports.

Then it’s time to make the shelves. They are pretty basic. First I need to cut a whole lot of lumber to size. I will make five shelves consisting out of a front and a back. These halves are constructed out of two pieces of wood glued and screwed to each other. That means I need to cut 20 equal sized pieces. After cutting I sand them and construct the shelves. By the way, the screws that you see me using are all stainless steel. Again for better weather resistance. It certainly gets wet here.

I temporarily fix some of the shelves with just one screw so that I’m able to measure if this thing is square. I do that by measuring the diagonal distance. If both diagonals are the same length it is square and I can attach the bracings for lateral stability. It will give this rack some good structural strength.

I was too lazy to get the miter saw out again so I cut the braces by hand. Using some glue clamps I climbed the bracing in place and then I glue and screw them to the structure. It really makes a noticeable difference. Now I only need to place the shelves and attach them to the rack to end up with the finished product.

My strawberry strategy is to every year plant five of the runners from last year and get rid of the oldest plants. Strawberry plants can live longer but after three to four productive years they decline rapidly. With my strategy I never have plans that are older than five years.

My wife instructed me to clean the terrace where this thing will be placed and as you can see I always obey to my wife’s rules. After the cleanup I fill the rack with the plants and I’m ready for the day.

Well, the strawberry rack is finished and to my surprise it looks very similar to what I drew on paper. Throughout the project I made some minor changes to make it work. I will update the plan and put it on my website, tonyneedshobbies.com, so that you can download it and make one awesome  strawberry rack for in your backyard.

Then I hope that you like this video and if you did please hit the like button, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel if you want to see more woodworking and gardening projects and for now I’d like to thank you for watching! Bye, bye!