Now that the Strawberries are mostly done fruiting, it’s time to prepare for next years patch.
Really? This soon?
Absolutely!
If you want to expand your patch or plant another patch, you will need more plants and there is no point in buying them when you likely have plants available for free.
Plus, your Strawberry patch should be replenished every 2-3 years as the plants do not fruit as well once they are past this age.
And all the plants you need to replace any exhausted plants are probably happily sprouting out from the patch you already have.
When Strawberry plants finish fruiting, the plants often send off what are known as runners.
These are long shoots (like the one above) that travel from the main plants and then find a place to start putting roots down.
The great thing is that once the roots have started to grow, you can then snip this runner off and replant it for a new, free Strawberry plant!
Or as many new, free plants as you have runners.
If you want to take advantage of these runners, either just let them travel and root where they go naturally or you can train them into new pots.
To do so, just pick up the shoot, lay it on top of the soil in the pot and peg it down.
The runner will sprout it’s own set of roots and once it has, you can cut the runner from the parent plant and you have your new plant ready for next season!
Don’t let the new plant send off any of it’s own runners until after it has fruited. Snip these off if they start so all the energy is put into the new plant growing healthy and strong for fruiting.
If you end up with more runners than you need, why not package the extras up to give away to friends and family so they can plant their own Strawberry patch?
I use one of these tools to make small newspaper pots
You could also sell your extra plants at the local markets or provide them as a donation to your local church, school fair or other community fundraising venture to sell.
Because who can resist the lure of fresh, homegrown Strawberries in their garden?
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