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Love summer strawberries but don’t have the space to grow all you want? Think UP! Discover 7 options for growing strawberries vertically with these clever DIY strawberry tower planter ideas and enjoy bountiful harvests of strawberries all season long.
Who can ever get enough of luscious summer strawberries? Whether you enjoy them on their own, pair them in recipes with rhubarb, or make loads of strawberry jam, there’s no such thing as too many strawberries, am I right?
But growing plentiful strawberries in your garden can gobble up a lot of garden real estate. That’s when vertical strawberry growing strategies can really help.
Growing strawberries vertically (as well as other crops) is just one of several ways to get more from a small space garden.
If you’re looking for strategies to help you squeeze in more strawberries, check out these creative options for growing strawberries vertically.
I’ll be sharing details of two methods to make strawberry towers by a talented and inventive gardener I interviewed for an article some years back, plus find links to some alternative options you can consider as well.
DIY Strawberry Tower Planter Ideas
I have the great good fortune of living near an incredibly creative gardener who has some ingenious ideas for creating beautiful, productive, and efficient garden designs. I met Cathy Collison many years ago when her stunning garden caught my eye as I drove by on my way to get groceries. I was so impressed that I pulled over then and there and introduced myself.
I wound up writing a feature article about her garden for Northern Gardener that I’ll republish here eventually, but for now, I’m focusing on the strawberry-growing element of the piece. I’ve checked back in with her each season (and bought some of her delicious berries!) to hear about her latest experiments and design innovations. Some of her ideas for growing strawberries vertically in funky DIY strawberry tower planters and hanging gutters are really worth trying yourself!
Cathy has transformed a nondescript grass lawn into one of the most productive and inspiring gardens I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. What I especially appreciate about her design strategy is how she turns everyday objects into practical, useful garden elements with an eye to minimizing her environmental impact.
Case in point: While designing her new garden, Cathy realized that the ductwork getting installed in her home at the time would make perfect vertical towers for strawberries like those she’d seen online made from PVC pipes. She wanted to avoid plastic as much as possible, so the sturdy metal pipes looked like the perfect solution.
She turned to a friend with skills in metalwork to cut planting holes for her, and voilà, her first DIY strawberry tower planters took form. She harvested bushels of strawberries from them for several years before she decided to try improving on their design.
Last season, she decided to see if restaurant food cans could help her solve the challenges she’d found with the pipe-based planter design. Instructions for building both strawberry planter towers are included below.
Cathy uses vertical growing techniques throughout the garden, with trellises dripping abundant squash and cucumbers, as well as other methods for growing strawberries vertically.
In addition to her DIY strawberry towers, Cathy grows strawberries in gutters and gutter-shaped planters she had a fellow artist and friend create for her.
Cathy hung the planters on a repurposed swing set and a homemade coat rack a friend had salvaged from a job site. They hang over her garden bed to let her make better use of vertical space.
When Cathy’s not in the garden, you can often find her making beautiful blown glass ornaments. Here are more photos if you want to see her many lovely creations. She can ship them if you see something you’d like to buy.
Which Type of Strawberries to Grow Vertically in DIY Strawberry Tower Planters
Another thing to know about Cathy: She says she’s “obsessed with strawberries” and plants hundreds of strawberry plants each season. “I want to master strawberries inside and out,” she told me on a garden tour she gave me several years ago.
In the seasons she’s gardened this plot, she’s trialed numerous types of everbearing strawberries, settling on Mara des Bois as the clear winner. Unlike flavorless strawberries grown for shipping, she explains, this French variety has exceptional flavor and aroma. You’re unlikely to find this variety for sale in a nursery, so you’ll need to get the plants online.
Cathy also loves that Mara des Bois are “super-prolific.” She averages a pint per day from her four towers all summer long and well into the fall. “They don’t slow down much from heat,” she reports, “and I was still picking them in October!” (If you don’t garden in the north, that might not impress you, but around here that’s AMAZING.)
For the intense production that happens in a strawberry tower planter, you use everbearing strawberries and replace them each season. Unlike berry plants you intend to have as perennials for years and years, using this method, these plants fruit well their first year, but then won’t produce much after that, so you compost them rather than allow them to function as a perennial.
In her experiments, Cathy found that Mara des Bois runners choked themselves out when grown in the ground. Growing strawberries vertically keeps them under control while making the most efficient use of space. They grow in her ductwork towers as well as in four hanging planters and a gutter attached to the railing on her front porch.
How to Grow Strawberries Vertically
You have multiple options when growing strawberries vertically. You can buy ready-to-use planters that stack on top of one another to make a tower, but I found the ones I tried didn’t have large enough pockets for the soil and dried out very quickly. If you do decide to go that route, get one with deep wells or a central area with soil for the plants to send roots into. Mine were too small to hold moisture well enough.
Below are some options with deeper wells you could try if you don’t want to DIY your strawberry planter towers.
Another thing you might consider to overcome this challenge is an automated watering system. I installed one last season, and it’s been game-changing for my garden, saving so much time and water and ensuring my plants always get the moisture they need, without me needing to remember or stand there for hours watering.
It’s really easy to run additional lines where you want them, so you should be able to hook one up to whichever method you choose for growing strawberries vertically. That could help ensure a steady supply of water without requiring you to take the time to provide it each day.
You can check out easy-to-use kits for planters and baskets here.
Find out more about using a drip irrigation system. I can’t recommend it highly enough!
DIY Strawberry Tower Planters Ideas
Strawberry Towers Made from HVAC Ductwork
To build strawberry towers like Cathy’s, start with spiral metal duct pipes cut to five-foot lengths. Drill two-inch planting holes down the sides of the planter that will get enough sun.
Use a small plastic tube (Cathy used a shower curtain rod) drilled with two millimeter holes in the top two-thirds to serve as a central conduit for water.
Place the tube in the center of each pipe and fill them with potting soil mixed with compost and manure. Cathy notes you can use just potting soil, but she generally uses an even mixture of potting soil, compost and manure to keep her garden inputs as local as possible.
Secure the tower to a railing, or if freestanding in the garden, to a sturdy stake to prevent it from falling over.
Strawberry tower planting tip: Cathy found that as the soil in the strawberry towers settled, her plants got sucked down with it. To keep them in place, she recommends rolling the plants and soil in ¼” hardware cloth before inserting them into the planting holes. The cloth will catch on the edge of the pipe and prevent the plants from getting pulled in. She advises setting up and filling the towers in the fall to allow soil to settle before planting the following spring.
Alternate DIY Strawberry Tower Planter Ideas
Cathy found that wrapping hundreds of plants individually each spring for her ductwork towers is a lot of work, and because they don’t have much soil to grow in, she thinks they don’t get all the nutrients she’d like them to.
Always eager to experiment and improve her designs, Cathy continued to tinker with new ways she could grow her strawberries vertically. Last time I visited her garden, I got to admire her newest creation:
Food Can Tower Design
Last season Cathy realized that large food cans might work to give her plants access to more soil and nutrients than the towers she’d made from pipes, so she built new strawberry towers out of huge restaurant cans.
She made each level of her towers using five cans riveted together into a ring. She says screws would also work.
Each can has ten holes: Four holes for rivets, three drainage holes on the bottom, and three drainage holes on the side facing the center of the ring.
The cans are then filled with soil and the levels are stacked to create towers. Her towers are seven levels tall.
She placed a mushroom substrate in the center of the tower to help keep plants cool and moist.
She found that her plants didn’t get enough water from the center substrate, though, and plans to cut a slit in them to improve water movement. Having to water each can individually took more time and effort than she’d like. She also cautions that the cans rust, so the tower won’t last nearly as long as those made from HVAC ductwork, which she says “would last pretty much indefinitely.”
As she experiments with new ideas, I’ll be sure to update this post with photos and how-tos.
Other options you could try:
If you don’t mind growing in plastic, there are some other creative ways to repurpose containers of various sorts and create your own homemade strawberry tower.
Plastic barrel planter: Piglet in Portugal made a DIY strawberry tower from an upcycled plastic barrel. Plants have abundant soil to grow in, and she included a central pipe filled with compost to feed them through the season.
Stacked nursery pot planter: A Piece of Rainbow used old nursery pots and made a water reservoir from a plastic water bottle.
Office crate or laundry basket planter: Loving Here makes towers from office crates and laundry baskets. An advantage here is that there’s no drilling if that’s something that puts you off DIYing your strawberry planter tower. And you could get the crates for a song secondhand.
PVC pipe tower: Urban Greenspace explains how to make towers using PVC pipes rather than ductwork Cathy used.
Wooden tower planter: Another option is building your own strawberry tower out of wood. Fanning Sparks shares how to build an attractive DIY wooden strawberry tower.
If you try one of these DIY strawberry tower planter ideas, please leave a comment and let us know how it went!
Caring for Strawberry Plants Grown Vertically
Strawberries grown in towers are treated as annuals, so they need to be an everbearing variety, which will produce in their first season.
Strawberry towers need daily watering. Cathy uses gallon milk jugs to fill the watering tube and generally finds each tower needs one to two gallons per day.
If you want to ensure your strawberry plants have ample nutrients to thrive, you may want to use a water-soluble fertilizer every few weeks.
Consider adding strawberry companion plants nearby to repel pests and encourage pollinators.
Make the most of your harvest by trying these clever uses for strawberry tops as well.
Do you love growing fruit? Be sure to check out these posts:
Save this info on growing strawberries vertically and DIY strawberry tower planters for later!
Susannah is a health and environmental writer focusing on gardening, foraging, medicinal plants, and sustainability. Her work has appeared in Mother Earth Living, Ensia, Northern Gardener, Sierra, and on numerous websites. Her first book, Everything Elderberry, released in September 2020 and was a #1 new release in holistic medicine, naturopathy, herb gardening, and other categories. Find out more and grab your copy here.
Hi, I'm Susannah, a garden geek, energy nerd, and fan of healthy food and natural remedies. Need some simple, practical solutions for living healthier and greener? You've come to the right place! More about me and my green projects
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