Potting up Runners

strawberry runners
It’s time to pot up some strawberry runners to make new plants for next year if you haven’t already done so. Just pot up the runners and snip off any bits of runner sticking out – making sure that it’s still attached to the mother plant. You can detach the young plants after a month or so once they have the strength to go it alone. Then they will stay in pots over winter and be planted out next spring. I’m only doing a few this year as I’m trying to decrease the number of strawberries I have – crazy I know! But this year so many of them went to waste because I couldn’t keep up with the harvesting of them. I felt terribly guilty. People congratulated me on such a wonderful crop and then gave me dirty looks when I let most of them go to rot! If this was the 1940s I would be reported to the Ministry for Food and given a hefty fine. And I would deserve it.

Category: Growing Fruit, Vegetables     Tagged:

4 Comments on “Potting up Runners”

  1. DON”T FEEL GUILTY – you’re doing more than your friends. It’s the picking that causes the problem, so next year, why don’t you offer your surplus to your friends to pick? Then they may be more sympathetic, as well as grateful. But don’t berate yourself – you’re doing the best you can, which is all anyone can do

    Joanna
    joannasfood.blogspot.com

  2. I know how you feel though, I’m the same this year with the runner beans. Why did I put so many plants in? I do it every year, and then you get the little comments when you see fellow allotmenteers in town! note to self; Do not overplant! So I’m with you on the strawberry thing!

  3. Hello there! Here via Ecoworrier, and just thought I’d say thanks for the timely suggestion – having spent a couple of hours battling with strawberries which were tangled up with horrendous bindweed, I could do with something more uplifting to do with ’em!

  4. Having just killed two strawberry plants I don’t think I’ll be undergoing a glut any time soon. May have to use the runner method to get a few more plants going…am I setting myself up for strawberry inundation/is this how it starts? LOL. Perhaps stick a sign on your allotment: Please help yourself to the strawberries…The same people probably do throw out food and don’t think twice about it.