How 60 Strawberry Plants Became 489 in less than one year

**WardinWake** 10/7/2010, 3:55 pm

Howdy Folks:

Mary and I have been reworking one of our strawberry SFG's the last two days. The bed is a 3X5 and we orginally planted four to each square. A 3X5 has 15 squares so that would be 60 plants that we planted in this bed in early spring this year. Some strawberry varieties are nown for producing a bunch of runners and this is one. Instead of clipping each runner to provide for the most berries per plant we let the runners grow. Each runner can reach 3 or more feet in length and some of the runners had as many as 4 "baby" strawberry plants on them. We dug out the mother plants and seperated the baby plants from the mother and re-planted the babies in small containers and re-planted the mother plants in two new 2X8 beds with more in large pots all in re-newed MM. After all the counting was done we had 489 strawberry plants. Not all of the new plants may take root so we will see in the spring how many are ready to go to full SFGs or for sell.

God Bless, Ward and Mary.

Chopper 10/7/2010, 4:03 pm

I believe it! I just redid my strawberry bed and there was bird netting over it and some of the babies had to be sacrificed because they were caught in the netting but it was obvious it didn't matter because they are going to keep putting out shoots no matter what I do!

CarolynPhillips 10/7/2010, 5:16 pm

Wow. That is a lot of babies. Sounds like strawberry paradise.
Do you know what variety you grew?

trustinhart 10/7/2010, 5:30 pm

Wow!!!,I'm reworking my beds for the spring, I've gotta try so strawberries!!! Again, do you know what variety they are?

Megan 10/7/2010, 7:50 pm

When I was little, I don't think we ever trimmed off the "babies"... just let them root and maybe rooted them elsewhere later. I'm eying my existing SFGs thinking that I may turn the strawberries loose in there. Maybe I'll actually get to eat a few next year.

laurainwinona 10/8/2010, 1:43 pm

Me too!! I replanted my strawberries yesterday. A friend gave them to me in the spring, and I just popped them into containers until I could get a new 4x4 built for them. I finally got them into the 4x4 yesterday (busy summer, including baby #5 born in May). I was amazed to see how many runners and baby plants there were! Some had sent runners all the way around the edge of the container with 2 or 3 baby plants on it. Some runners spilled over the edge of the container and had rooted in the ground and sent out more runners with babies! If I had kept all those baby plants, I would have had enough plants to fill another 6 squares or so! Now I just have to figure out what to do for the winter, as I posted elsewhere. Smile

martha 10/8/2010, 5:42 pm

Ward, I am a softie. Before I separate the babies from the mother, I have to know - do they cry a lot?

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