Strawberry Pot Secret

Have you ever been challenged by a strawberry pot? I mean the garden plant pot that has holes around the sides so that you can grow plants out of them as well as out of the top.

They always look lovely planted up with cascading plants but I then find them impossible to water. Watering from above invariably results in the water running out the uppermost holes in the side, never reaching the bottom; and the pot is generally too tall for it to be able to be effectively watered from standing it in a saucer of water.

Well, I am happy to now be able to share an ingenious secret watering device for just this sort of pot. It comes in the shape of a disused bit of plastic waste pipe - the sort that runs from the plughole of any domestic sink to the drain. I had salvaged one from my old kitchen before the skip was collected and it was just a few centimetres shorter than my strawberry pot.

First things first, you need to drill a series of small holes into the waste pipe so that it is entirely perforated.

Next, take your empty strawberry pot and line the bottom with gravel to aid drainage and give your pipe something to stand up in. Nestle your now very leaky waste pipe in the centre and fill that with more gravel. It should now be able to stand upright in the centre of your pot.

Now begin to plant up your pot, being careful not to get any soil into the pipe as this will just silt up the gaps between the gravel.

Once fully planted you can water the pot by pouring the water into the pipe. It then gradually seeps out of the holes you drilled into the surrounding soil. Well, that's the theory anyway. Fingers crossed it works!

I've planted my pot up with six different varieties of thyme - Broad Leaved, Orange Scented, Lemon Variegated, Foxley, Silver Posie, and Creeping Red - with some less-hardy parsley and tarragon in the top, which should be easy to replace since it's unlikely to survive the winter.