How are Strawberries Propagated?

Strawberries are a favourite for many people. They are sweet, healthy and can be grown in pots or containers at home or in smaller spaces.

In this short article, we will tackle questions such as:

What propagation method is used for strawberries?
Which part of the strawberry helps to propagate?
Can I grow strawberries from a cutting?

Strawberry Runners

The strawberry plant produces what we call “runners”. These runners grow outwards from the mother plant, as seen in the image below.

Daughter Plants

Along the runner, you will find smaller, daughter plants that grow looking for soil to propagate.

To propagate, you can gently push the daughter plant into the soil. This can be done directly into the ground or a pot with soil.

Strawberry Crown

After a few days of the daughter plant in the soil, it will start developing a new “crown”, that is, the place from where the leaves, flowers, and fruit of the strawberry grow.

After a further few days, potentially a couple of weeks, the new strawberry plant will grow stronger and have longer roots.

Planting Strawberry plants

At that point, the daughter plant is ready to be cut from the original mother plant and be planted in its new location, either directly into the ground or a pot.

You can also experiment by using a vertical garden system to grow your strawberries.

The best way to cut the new plant from the original one is by using a clean pair of gardening scissors.

When planting your new strawberry plant, the crown must remain above ground or soil. At the same time, make sure all roots remain under the soil.

Strawberry plants are a little delicate in terms of planting, and usually need the crown and roots to be at the right depth.

This is the easiest way of propagating strawberry plants through cutting.

Increase fruit production

If, however, you do not want to propagate strawberry plants, and instead want to focus on growing your current plant and maximising strawberry fruit production, then you are better off cutting any unnecessary extra runners.

Growing runners and daughter plants takes away energy from the main strawberry plant, and removing these ensures the plant can focus its energy on growing and producing more strawberry fruit.

For more tools and tips, please check out the below:

If you found this post interesting, you might also like the following:

Join our newsletter! Subscribe here to get fresh content delivered to your inbox.