Do This for More Strawberries

I have a garden - actually 2 raised beds and the one large normal garden. We planted corn, squash, cabbage and sweet potatoes there.  In the raised beds are my strawberries, tomatoes, green beans, a couple purple cabbage, peas and sweet pepper (and one hot pepper) plants.

So now you see why I had to follow this Pinterest link and see what I could learn. I found this tip that I thought everyone would want to know about too.  I did NOT do well at all with my strawberries this year. And I now see why.  Wish I would have read this earlier! 

Here are the ever-bearing type strawberries that I thought I was growing. But I really wasn't. I have June-bearing Strawberries, which have runners. Runners are long stems that run off the central plant and create baby strawberry plants.  These baby strawberry plants suck the nutrients out of the central plant and the central plant will lose its ability to produce fruit.  Ah-ha!  That is what happened to my plants!

I discovered that "ever-bearing strawberry varieties put out less runners (or no runners at all) than the June bearing varieties" so I am pretty sure my June-bearing ones prevailed over my Ever-bearing plants. I have a TON of runners! And even though I've cut them off -- now, I think it's too late.

So what do runners look like and how do you trim them?  Here is how, but also go directly to this link to get all the good info about this! 

A runner is always longer (or running) from the central plant.  Now simply remove the runner at the base of the plant. Usually you can see a little baby plant along the runner or at the very end of it.

That's it for today!  Tomorrow I will have a tip that will be about as good if not better than this one! Be sure to subscribe and invite others to this blog.  Always something different!