If you’re on a budget and you’re not in a hurry to get your garden filled out, planting strawberries far apart is a more economical option.
This method works with strawberry plants that produce runners, so the plants propagate themselves without any extra work on your part. They’ll multiply over time and produce baby plants for free, which means you don’t have to buy as many in the beginning.
When you plant strawberries farther apart, you plant them across the entire future strawberry bed, leaving upwards of 2 to 3 feet of space between plants. You’ll have a lot of bare ground and you’ll need to be patient, but your patience will pay off once the runners grow in.
After their first year, most strawberry plants have between three and six baby plants on each of their runners. If left alone, these baby plants will root themselves and mature into adult plants.
But if you want to fill in the empty spaces in your garden bed more effectively, it’s best to move and transplant the babies where you want them.
Once the baby plants are established, the runners dry up and fall off. These new plants will eventually produce their own runners, thus creating even more baby plants—so you can see how it’s pretty simple to let a strawberry patch grow in on its own.
Most varieties of strawberries send out multiple runners, which are more properly known as stolons. The word “stolon” comes from the Latin word stolo, meaning a shoot or branch springing from the root.
Runners are long, leafless stems that run horizontally above the ground and have baby plants at the ends, which are genetic copies of the mother plant. These tiny clones form adventitious roots (similar to the stems of tomato plants) and grow into the ground surrounding the mother plant, eventually becoming new plants.
Most varieties of strawberries send out multiple runners, which are more properly known as stolons. The word “stolon” comes from the Latin word stolo, meaning a shoot or branch springing from the root.
Runners are long, leafless stems that run horizontally above the ground and have baby plants at the ends, which are genetic copies of the mother plant. These tiny clones form adventitious roots (similar to the stems of tomato plants) and grow into the ground surrounding the mother plant, eventually becoming new plants.
Runners are produced by nearly all Junebearing strawberries, and some everbearing and day-neutral strawberries.