Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: DanielCoffey on July 27, 2019, 12:27
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Hello folks - I have a quick question about letting young Strawberry plants runner or not.
The young Threave Royal that I planted in fresh soil this spring are very vigorous and are persistently trying to send out runners. I understand that the usual practice is to cut and deny runners and fruits for the first season but after removing 8-10 runners per plant so far they are still trying hard to send them out.
I am considering allowing a couple to take root to get a head start on multiplying up next season. What do you think?
The bed that they are in at the moment is a 2' x 4' raised table planter and they have just about taken up all the available room (three plants in the entire planter) so I have a new 8' x 4' raised bed with fresh fertile soil ready to receive runners from the supplier this autumn. Since the Threave Royal are so vigorous I was considering allowing those to be the donors for the next generation in the new bed.
Here are a few pictures to show how vigorous the young plants are.
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I would keep a few. Maybe only one or two per plant.
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Decide how many new plants you want then cut the healthiest runners after the first leaf growth. Peg the leaf into a plant pot until it starts growing then separate it from its parent plant. Cut off all the other runners from the plants to let them build up strength for next year.
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Cheers folks.
I am intending to start with eight plants in the bed that I have. Since I already have two Threave Royal and one Symphony that were planted this spring, I will encourage the Threaves to make two runners each and do just one from the Symphony so I end up with six and two. I will snip off any other runners once I have got those healthy ones. Next year they can just do their thing.