Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi Everyone,

I'm new here and had my strawberries plants (darselect) for about a month and a half now in a pot the are producing loads of flowers ready to fruit the are what I think are call runners coming off some of the plants

The question is what do a do with these as i have heard you can plant them and have new plants.

Also can you put them in hanging baskets as i have a few laying around.

Looking forward to your replies

The runners need to be allowed to grow some roots during the summer, before snipping them off in the autumn. Some people let the runners root into the ground, while others surround the parent plant with small plant pots and use a paper clip to pin down the runner (to ensure ground contact and rooting).

Strawberries grow like weeds almost anywhere. They will grow quite happily in baskets, tubs, window boxes and so on - just make sure they get plenty of water (I water mine in barrels every couple of days, but the one's in the ground only once a week or less). Strawberries are quite thirsty plants.

The more runners the plant produces, the less it will grow and fruit.
The more fruit it produces, the less it will grow and the less runners.
Basically, the plant only has so much energy and you need to concentrate that energy on what you want. If you don't need runners, cut them off and save the plants energy. My strawberries in barrels have recently begun to send out runners and I cut them all off. My strawberries in beds are fruiting and producing runners. I'll take whatever fruit they give as a bonus and I'll use the runners to plant more barrels in the autumn.

Cheers for the reply

At the moment 2 plants have 1 runner each coming off it one of them has little roots starting to sprout out, i will leave them to to grow but the other plants have loads of fruit on, will keep an eye out on those other plants and cut the runner off it i see any.