not correcting you by any means… but i would think 3-5 yrs would be fair… and probably a steady decline after 3 yrs. So probably wise to replace every 3 yrs.
The ‘replace every year’ is about the same as ‘change your oil every 3000 miles’. YMMV though.
Thanks. I plan to expand my amount of plants so these runners can be used for growing more.
Im going to try 8 or so 10’ gutters… i already have 4 up and 2 with plants.
@mrsg47 gave me the inspiration.
Somewhere deep on this forum there is a guy growing his in i think 2.5 gallon pots and i will probably never find it again but his plants and setup were perfect for what i want to do.
if i have time i will try to find it again and share unless someone knows who/what im talking about.
i plant in holes in groundcover cloth every 12in. 1st year i grow out the plants and if they have runners i put a hole at 6in and root 1 of them in between the mother plants. i did that last year with the beds i have now. i let the extra runners run off the beds or if i have time i cut off the extras and sometimes root them to share. both runner and mother will fruit for me in late June. ill pull the 1st mother plants after fruiting and replace them with a runner from the 1st set of runners. i amend that hole with some compost 1st. so in reality the mother plant is only fruiting 1 x before being
replaced by a runner. it sounds complicated but its much easier to maintain than matted row growing. when i decide to try another variety i take off the cover and remove all the plants in fall. I amended it well then come spring start all over again.
Thanks for explaining what you do. I’m new to strawberries, but I thought the flavor is not well developed the first year? This sounds like you pull the mother plant after one year?
if you wanted you could let them fruit for a year then capture a runner the 2nd year allowing the mother plant to fruit a 2nd time. it’s just how i do it.
FANTASTIC post super informative and very helpful, thank you!!! Keep us updated!
Common misconception in my opinion. Most people talk about June bearing and not letting them fruit the first year so that they can focus on getting bigger vs ripening fruit. Most people also don’t realize everbearing varieties exist so they talk in generalization to all types. You don’t have to pinch the flowers on the everbearing varieties, just the first wave of flowers, not the rest IF you don’t want to.
Man ya’ll are really out here only letting them fruit once? 
I would say replace every 3-5 years or when you start to see a decline… some of my plants are on their 3rd year and doing amazing still 
personally, i feel like the notion of having to replace due to decline is only because people don’t realize they have to continue to fertilize the plant yearly so by 2nd, 3rd, or 4th year, there’s not enough food for them to make food. All just my speculation and opinion.
Please, please, please, please ya’ll… let your berries live for more than 2 years
i only do it this way to control the number of plants in my beds. if you allow all the new runners to root , you have a bed choked with plants that don’t fruit. then you have to kill off the bed and start all over. i learned the hard way.
Also i fertilize mine every month. Since they’re almost all everbearing varieties that fruit more than twice a season, they’re very heavy feeders.
If you like all season berries, prepare to fertilize all season for top performance. If they’re hungry, they won’t be able to produce as much in comparison to when all their needs are met. Kind of like us
Ah, i just clip off runners or pull them up as soon as they root and sell them or give them away
its completely different when you grow in containers compared to in ground beds. the roots have alot more room to grow and dont need to be fertilized as often. i fertilize mine in spring and just as fruit are forming. the less time a plant is in there the less it needs to be fertilized. im talking about junebearing varieties. i havent grown everbearing for awhile now.
The roots don’t typically go lower than 12 inches from what I’ve seen and some of my pots are 25 gallons with worms in them.
When i was in Colorado, i grew them in ground as well and did the same. From my experience and observation, there wasn’t a difference in ground or in pot since most of the pots i use are bigger than the root needs
This is good to know. We’ve been pulling flowers for weeks on our 75 new strawberries, but they are avidly flowering daily. You think OK to let the June bearing fruit or do you mostly pull those flowers first year?
there’s barely any room for runners to root in pots compared to raised beds . that’s the big difference. majority of runners run off the pots and don’t root in the same pots the mothers in. totally different situation.
Thanks for sharing this! I’m excited to let my Junes keep their flowers then and try some this year.
if you want to try them, let some fruit. it will set them back some but im guilty of it. 
It would have to depend on the size and depth of the pot. I let mine root in and outside of the pots. Sometimes in ground, sometimes in smaller pots I’ll prepare and have it sitting on standby. I can root at least 10 in one of my 25 gallon pots or 20 in one of my 30 gallon fabric pots but i reserve those for sweet potatoes. You can successfully root within inches of the mother plant as long as you pull them up before the second year.
This conversation is getting interesting and I like seeing the different opinions and that everyone is being respectful. Such is life as there are typically more than one way to do things. This is my first year to grow strawberries in a serious way. I have both june and ever bearing varieties in large containers on my back deck. It’s interesting to study how different each grow and fruit.
