Strawberries

Now is also a good time to tend to last year’s strawberry plants, by removing the runner plants which can then be planted. If your plants are a few years old it may be worth replacing them. The best runners are the ones closest to the mother plant. It is good practice to replace about a third of your plants every year, starting with the weaker or older ones. That means you should always have a good rotation and full crops. Strawberries also suit being planted in large pots, so if you have an excess of runners that’s a good way to use them. One oily ragger has written to us to say they are using their runners to create a vertical garden by hanging pots of strawberry plants on a wall in their garden.