Strawberry Runners

Strawberry runners can give you enough plants to fill your strawberry garden! Learn all about runners in strawberries here!

Let's begin with a little terminology. "Daughter plants" are the plants that come from strawberry runners (the vine-like structures that grow, or "run", along the ground). "Mother plants" are the original plants (the ones that send out the runners). If allowed, a mother plant's growing runners will eventually send down roots and start daughter plants.

Some strawberry varieties have little to no runner production (are "runnerless"). This is especially true for "everbearing" (or "long day") varieties, such as certain varieties of the "Alpine" wood strawberry, Fragaria vesca ssp. semperflorens. However, most strawberry varieties do have runners and reproduce through them.

If your strawberry plants make runners, you will need to decide when to keep the runners, and when to cut the runners off the plants. Keeping the runners will provide you with daughter plants for your strawberry patch. However, the strawberries on your mother plants will be smaller due to using lots of their energy for making runners.

Thus, it is a good idea to remove runners as soon as you have enough plants for your gardening space. Any time of the growing season is ok for cutting the runners, but they should not be cut until you can be sure that they are runners and not something else (you'll know once these strawberry vines start to grow along the ground).

If you allow the runners to form daughter plants, you may want to transplant the daughters elsewhere in your garden. When is the best time to transplant these runner plants?

Transplanting daughter plants can be done anytime after the new plants have developed 2 or 3 leaves. However, the larger the plants are before you transplant them, the more likely they are to do well. Therefore, it is best to let the plants grow as large as possible before transplanting.

If there are no frosts in your growing area, then the plants may be allowed to grow to full size before transplantation. If frosts do happen where you have your strawberry plants then you should do the transplanting at least one month before the first frost, giving the moved plants time to adjust to their new spots before cold weather begins.

Now you know everything necessary for handling the runners in your strawberry patch! Please remember where you found this page:

StrawberriesForStrawberryLovers.Com, Home of the World's Happiest Fruit!

Return to Tips for Growing Strawberries
from Strawberry Runners

Return Home from
Strawberry Runners