Making Room for Strawberries

We've been making a lot of changes in the yard and one that is ready for documentation is the removal of bamboo from this garden bed and making it a more useful space for us. I assume that whoever planted the bamboo in the middle of this garden bed was doing so for kind of a privacy screen, because there is a small window on the second floor of the house next door.

Bamboo garden box when we moved in

We decided we'd rather use this garden bed for strawberries, but didn't get rid of the bamboo entirely: I transplanted 6 large pots full, located in between the bed and the fence. I really like bamboo, but I needed it to look as if it were placed more purposefully, and this arrangement still allows for a bit of taller natural privacy at this location along the fence.

I used about half of the existing bamboo, which was all I was able to easily dig up. The larger, more dense clump in the center had deeper roots and was too difficult to separate out. So I listed the remaining bamboo on the Portland Craigslist free section, and a guy was at our house within a few hours to dig out the rest of it and take it with him, leaving a really nice and empty garden box:

Since we planned to use this garden bed for strawberries, it made sense to remove the upper bed section and use just the lower. The upper section had started rotting at the edges, so the short ends pulled off easily on each side. As you can see, the top bed wasn't completely full, but before anything else I had to remove a lot of dirt and level the remaining soil to just below the lower bed line. Then I took a hammer and removed the small pieces of wood holding the longer side on, and removed that. I left the fence side plank on for now, but may remove it later. It's not really in the way there and that cuts down on wood waste if we can't find another use for these. In the photo below you can see the old boards leaning up against the shed on the left, which we are planning on getting rid of by also listing it on Portland's Craigslist free section.

We used some of the extra dirt to fill the raspberry bed and topped off two of the planned vegetable garden beds (the only 2 currently weeded and now ready for planting). I shoveled the remaining soil onto a tarp and into some pots, which we'll need once the rest of the garden beds are cleared of yard debris and weeded.

Strawberries planted

Amongst other things, I finished the extra dirt removal, took off the upper bed planks, and planted the strawberries on a single, 65+ degree Sunday in late March. The strawberries I'd purchased at Portland Nursery the Friday before on my way home from work. There are about three rows each of the three varieties I selected: Albion, Benton, and Quinault. I spent some time at the nursery reading all of the tags and decided on those three for best length of fruiting through the spring, summer and fall. We probably won't have much fruit on them this year  since they are just establishing and we're supposed to pinch off the flowers to help the plant grow larger and spread. Next year though, we'll have a very nice crop!

Update: September 2014. Pretty much all of the transplanted bamboo died, so I cut it all down! Still have to throw the roots in the compost bin and find a new place for the remaining soil. That will be a project for spring!