Janice: You can root the runners from your hanging baskets, but you will somehow have to get some small pots up to the level of the runners and keep them there. Strawberry runners will root below the rosette of leaves that forms at the end of the runner, but in order to do so they must be in contact with moist soil. They will not root while hanging out in the air. Once the runners have rooted you can cut them off and carefully transplant the resulting plant to a bed. But if you cut off the runners without rooting them beforehand, they will die. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Veggie: 1. Did the runners you stuck in the dirt root or not? I assume you know that they root beneath the rosette of leaves at the end of a runner. If there are roots under these new rosettes, you can remove the rest of the runner completely, and you will have a stand-alone plant. If you buried the runners before leaf rosettes formed, you may have prevented the formation of new plants. 2. You don't really winterize containerized strawberries. You move them to a location, such as a garage, shed, or basement, where the roots and the soil will not freeze solid. There is no need to do this until night temperatures fall significantly below freezing, and stay that way. Let the plants go dormant outdoors before moving them into a protected area, which should not be warm enough to break them out of dormancy. Put them back outdoors when temperatures are just creeping back up to 30 degrees or so. Strawberries are tough, and can stand a lot of cold, but they can't be allowed to freeze solid. 3. It is normal for strawberry leaves to die and turn brown as the plant enters dormancy. You can remove them if you like. The important thing is to keep the roots and crown healthy, and protect them from a very hard freeze. 4. It is difficult to keep the same containerized strawberry plants going for years. At least every two years, you should dump out and renew the soil, and replant the younger, more vigorous plants. Do this in very early spring, before the plants come out of dormancy. Throw out plants that have elongated crowns and have been around for two years or more, since their berry production and size will decline substantially. 5. Did you get any strawberries this past season, and what type of strawberry are you growing? Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Can be used in the garden where spreading into a patch is acceptable, even useful (it then functioning as groundcover). This popular ornamental is also much-planted out here, where I sometimes see it produce runners but most often see little obvious sign of this behavior. I am more concerned about the floppiness of taller cultivars, a foliage mildew or similar condition that may become general on this plant here, and the fact that I have had two different forms freeze to the ground in two different plantings I have done (over a period of years). Back there invasiveness of Nandina, in the ecological context is a problem in states where it has seeded out into natural areas.

Organicburro, sorry for the late response... barrier crops are nectar and/or pollen sources planted between different varieties of the same species when seed saving. They not only provide a physical barrier, they also provide a stopping point for bees, a place to "wipe their feet" so to speak. This means that they are less likely to carry pollen between the two varieties being saved. For a barrier crop to be effective, it must bloom at the same time as the plants it divides. For this reason, trellises of pole lima beans & runner beans (which flower freely) make good barriers between different varieties of common pole beans (which flower sparsely). Along with distance & the interspersed planting of good pollen sources (like cosmos, zinnias, sunflowers, and cucurbits) it decreases the chances of cross-pollination between the beans. However, the varieties being saved should not be grown immediately next to the barrier crop; they should still have some distance between them, perhaps 25-50 feet if possible. It has been mentioned that the British have bred runner beans for their pods, and have many named varieties. Organicburro shared a source on another thread, which is in the link below; they carry many named cultivars of runner bean, most of which are very hard to find in the U.S. Here is a link that might be useful: Gourmet Seed International