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You can see the first use I put the groundcover to in the following picture.

Every gardener has to try out new ideas, right?

Well, this is one of my great ideas to grow lots and lots of strawberries in a limited space.

Strawberries did beautifully, in blossom and loaded with small fruit. Of course this appeared to be an ideal way to grow 500 Strawberry plants in just a 10 X 30 sq. ft. area.

Best of all, the berries would be nice and clean, and I could pick them mostly standing up.

Neighbors were commenting on how neat it looked and how great an idea...

I could almost taste the strawberry shortcake - the hours of drilling, fitting and building the towers faded into history.

Then,

One Sunday morning...

I went out to check on those berries with hopes that a couple of them had turned red - the sweetness was in my mouth even before I went out the door.........

Oh, NO!

Our dear dairy goat was in goat heaven - she was standing on her hind legs finishing off some of the berries on the top layers and the sight was sickening.... How did she get out THIS time...

Here is what I had...

Roots dried out and 80% of the berry plants shot!

This is how I then moved on and started planting on the groundcover for other crops.

As I have stated in another post, 200 tomato plants this past year and hundreds and hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. Canned a whole lot of them, dried a bunch ate all I could, gave family, friends and neighbors all they wanted.

So, I guess the cardinal rule in gardening is try, try again.

This year I will be expanding this considerably - no tilling, NO WEEDING, earlier planting - Life is good again. :-)

Shame you did not just grow a patch for the goats.
[smile]

I like the rack you built, very interesting and someone was asking yesterday how to grow more in a small space.

Your goat reminds me of Sunshine, she was the goat from hell,the one all the books are written about.

Sunshine was about 4 or 5 months old, a mixed blood Nubian and ?, we were not prepared to take a goat home, so she was in the back of a 55 Chev wagon.

We had to stop at Sears for a pump part and I went in with Bill, I knew better, as the wagon had library books, and a months supply of groceries and feed in it already.

Sears took longer than I expected, so I went to check on Sunshine, and found her in the front seat, watching a group of people watching her and heard one woman tell another “I tell you that is a goat, I know what a goat is”.....

I walked up to the open [a little] window and said “Sunshine, I told you to stay in the back seat!!!!”

And Sunshine got back in the back and sat down.

A hippy type gal said “Oh!!! is she trained to ride with you?”

Of course I said “Yes.”

I wished that I had sold her to the crowd.

Mary had too many weeds, so we took Sunshine to eat weeds and Sunshine said “There is no way you can force me to eat weeds, I want alfalfa hay.”

So we took her home after a couple days.

Bill only put up with the goats, to please me, and preferred them to not fall in love with him, as King Louie our billy goat had done, he was Bill’s shadow.

Sunshine would see Bill sitting in the patio and come at a dead run and jump on him, quite a feat when she got a little older and painful.

She was in everything, even went missing and was found in a 1000 gallon water tank, No idea of how she got in it, but it did not have a top and no water in it.

We were very active in finding her another home, don’t know how she did there, but a family with 10 boys would have been about right for her.

I do like your growing ideas, keep thinking and trying new ways.

Thank you very much for posting the photos of your strawberry 'patch' ... that was a very imaginative, impressive and innovative project. I too like coming up with unusual ways to do usual things. When I first used the landscape fabric in the garden, the oldtimers all poo-poo'd the idea, mostly because I don't think they understood how it would 'breathe'. We have long spells of 100+ temps here and I feared that the black color would cause too much heat, but it actually didn't. The fabric gets way too hot to sit on, but it doesn't seem to radiate the heat up to the plants.

I've read the replies that you've already given about construction, but I was wondering if each PVC pipe that held the pots were anchored into the ground, or was it just the supportive frame that was anchored?

My goats would love to get ahold of my garden area, but their fenced pasture is on the other side of the property for that very reason. If they escape, they've got a bunch of ground to cover before they get to something they can damage. Luckily, they have lots of room and are fed more than they really need, so they don't ever try to escape. ;-)