Having read Marie IANNOTTI’s excellent article on “How to plant a Strawberry Pot (Strawberries Optional)“, I want to show the good results that I obtained with strawberries growing in my plastic bottles :

Using classical PET bottles, I first perforated the bottom (making two tiny little holes of 2-3 mm).  Then, I have cut the upper cone of the bottle, made a slit in the wall of it (to be able to fold the cone a bit) and pushed it in the bottle, down to the bottom to form a sort of a dome over the drainage holes (stop taken off).

After filling the bottle with potting soil (mixed with a bit of water stocking TerraCottem soil conditioner), I planted a young strawberry plant on top, compacting quite well the potting soil by pushing it down, leaving a cavity of some 5 cm (2 inches) at the top of the bottle (for ulterior watering).

As a maximum of irrigation water is kept in the bottle (surplus is drained) and there is less evaporation, the potting soil with the TerraCottem keeps the inside of the botttle moistened for a longer time.  Thereby, the strawberries (or other plant species, even young trees !) are growing continuously almost without any water stress.

It’s simple and very cheap, but the results are remarkable (see  the picture above).  I am sure that the same results can be obtained with very cheap plastic shopping bags, that can easily be transformed into “grow bags“.