Kate:

Most strawberries grow new runners in the course of the season, which take root at some distance from the mother plants. Is that what is happening to your plants?

Strawberry plants grown in full sun and fertile soil can also become quite large and bushy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but crowding of the plants is. If your plants have become closer than 8-10 inches apart through growth of new runners some of them should be completely removed to allow light and air to the plants, which will help to control diseases and fruit rots. Crowding of plants will also reduce your total berry harvest, and certainly affect size and quality.

Quinault is an everbearer, and theoretically will resume berry production in the cooler weather of late summer and early fall, so it may be worthwhile to thin the plants now, removing the older plants first. I never had much luck with Quinault here, but it is a West Coast variety, and your conditions are different.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Don:

Good morning and thank you for your post. Yes they have all developed runners and the plants have increased quite a bit in size. I definitely have them planted entirely too close to one another. Your post was full of helpful information and I appreciate that. I think in light of your input I will wait another week or two until my lettuce harvest is done and then move some of the strawberries into that space. Or give a few plants to friends and then they should be left with the kind of spacing you're describing.

Which leaves me with one final question on the runners. Should I just trim those back? I did so yesterday since I wasn't sure how to handle them and was removing spent blooms and trying to tidy the plants up in general.

Again thank you.

Kate

Kate:

What is meant by "trimming them back"? Do you mean cutting off leaves or removing runners entirely, roots and all? There is not much point in cutting off leaves until the plants are ready to go into dormancy, at which point leaf removal can be helpful in controlling diseases.

If you want to keep your patch going for several years, you will want to leave at least some of the runners, since they are the future of your patch. Older plants can often continue to produce into the 2nd or even the 3rd season, but production declines and berry size declines dramatically. Newly formed plants generated by runners will be more vigorous and productive in the future. Older plants can be identified by their longer crowns, which have the history of all their past leaves written on them.

So if you are going to move or give away plants, make sure they are the youngsters, not the oldsters.

None of the above addresses the most common problem of strawberry plantings, and that is weeds, particularly perennial weeds like bermuda grass and clovers. You may not have them in CA, but we sure have them here, and keeping them controlled is the real challenge.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA