Increasing your strawberry patch for FREE

If you live in a similar climate as I do...and you have a few strawberry plants...Now is the time to gather your FREE plants...If you look amongst the leaves, you will notice runners that you can turn into new plants.

It's really simple to increase your strawberry plant numbers during this time.....all you have to do is plant the runners on. If your garden bed has the space, nature will most certainly do it for you...but seeing my strawberry bed is a bunch of self-watering pots.....I feel I need to guide nature a little and give my strawberry plants some extra help along the way....Of course, saving these extra plants pays off by rewarding you with lots more free strawberry plants.....Did you know you can get roughly 20 runners off an individual strawberry plant? (I'm not sure if that is the entire life of a single plant)

There are many ways to collect your strawberry runners, but this is the method I prefer to use....I was never told how to do this, but my theory is.....the longer time the runner can be attached to the mother plant, the better the survival of the baby plant, while it is vulnerable and growing. Remember, the mother plant is usually growing in a larger amount of soil AND mulched...which limits the possibility of the new plant drying out while it is setting roots.

Consider it the umbilical chord for the baby plant.

Below, you can see that I use little wire pegs to keep the plant attached to the soil, so the runner can set roots easier. The peg is just a loop of wire, sometimes I use one on each side of the plant, sometimes it just needs  one.....

Once they are well rooted, these will be planted out into a new garden bed.
There's plenty more FREE strawberry plants coming along.

Below: I'm also helping out the Barrack Heights Community Garden with their strawberry patch and I gathered these runners  last week, and bought them home to grow. Seeing they don't have the mother plant...I will be keeping an eye on them...and once they are well rooted, they will be returned to the Community Garden for a new strawberry bed in the making. 

Barrack Heights Community Garden
Strawberry runners

On Saturday at the garden course, Richard demonstrated that you can completely cut the leaves off the crown, along with most of the roots, and they will still grow.....but I had already done these this way.
I still prefer to keep them attached to the mother plant for the health of the new plant, but if/when you are gifted runners to take home....plant them however you feel works best.

In the garage we have/hoard/collect/recycle a draw of electrical wire of all different diameters and/or plastic coated, that is just another form of recycling that we do....Sometimes I strip the wire, depending on what I need it for....but for strawberry runners...no need. (see the red pegs in the picture above)

Here's some light humour for you....

If you think you have removed all the seed from your Pak Choy seed pods

and decide to use the dried pod shells for mulch.......

Be prepared for seeds to pop up anyway. (below)

don't worry; once these Pak Choy seedlings are a bit bigger

they will be moved on to another area in the garden.

Do you save your strawberry runners? 

Have you ever used your empty seed pods as mulch?