Now is a good time to sort out the strawberry plants ready for next years fruit crop

No matter how carefully I plant them and care for them my strawberry plants always seem to reach a stage about this time of year when they need tidying up and sorting.

Strawberry plants will be producing lots of 'runners' at this time of year - late summer, early autumn.

The tiny new plants form on the stems (runners) that grow out from the main plant and these are an excellent source of new and free plants. The traditional way to grow runners on to useful sized plants was to peg down the stem that the plant had put out,pegging it to the ground close to the new strawberry plants. Once the new plant was established with roots we were told you could then dig it up and transplant it to its new 'home' in the fruit garden.  However, I have discovered that this is not always necessary as sometimes the strawberry plant will put down roots without being pegged down with a hairpin shaped piece of wire.

Once your new strawberry plants have put down roots and have grown to a reasonable size to transplant, you can then cut them free and transplant them to a new strawberry bed. this is a good time of year to tidy up the strawberry plants remove any damaged leaves and cut off and remove any runners (and their stems) that you do not want to use for new plants.