I planted a few different kinds of musk strawberries a few months ago and covered the ground around them with mulch. I’ve noticed that they started producing runners. How do runners work for these - should I just leave them alone and they will cover the ground with more strawberries?
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you will need to prune all but 1 runner per plant otherwise you will have nothing but leaves in 2 seasons. they are very vigorous.
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Dont prune the runners till they take root. Then I will send you postage in the fall when they size up a bit.
If they grow like my vesca there going to fill out every inch of the available area inn two years
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Not for musk strawberries. They will form a solid groundcover and continue blooming well each year. Keeping them thinned out will just leave space for weeds to grow.
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Thanks, everyone! I’ll hold off on cutting the runners for now and just in case reach out to the place where I bought them to see what they recommend.
they filled in so tightly here by the 2nd year.,there was no fruit at all. just lots of leaves. then i started to lay composted woodchips in evenly spaced rows to smother some of them and get air in there then they started to fruit again. they are planted in a 4yr. old chicken run.
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I believe your non-fruiting second year was coincidental. Allowing them to form a solid groundcover doesn’t seem to reduce flowering. It’s possible that the overabundance of nitrogen from the chicken run may have caused them to focus solely on spreading in their second year. As the nitrogen wore off (aided by the woodchips), they began to grow with more balance between spreading and flowering.
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The nursery where I bought these replied and said that the musk strawberry runners don’t affect the yields so according to them it’s a question of whether you want to let it spread or not.
Well, I’ll see next year if berry production is affected or not but thanks god I happened to plant these musk strawberries in a fairly contained location. In just a few months it copy-pasted itself all over and is already attempting to climb and escape the rockeries. If I knew how well it does, I would have saved some money and just bought 1 pair of each.
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As long as they have enough of the required nutrients, it won’t affect fruiting. I leave all my runners and then sell them the spring after😅until then, my bed is 1 whole strawberry plant. I don’t cut the runners until they’ve gone dormant or unless I’m giving them away before they do. I have everbearing varieties as well.