Layering strawberry plants

September marks the beginning of fall, and it is a great time to plant your strawberries and layer them, too.

Layering is an easy technique which is quite simple and quick. It renews growth of your strawberry plants while producing offshoots, too.

Ideal timing for layering

  • Fall

Required tools

  • 1 pot or 1 nursery pot
  • soil mix
  • 1 or 2 small metal hoops, or smallish stones like broken terra cotta pots

How to layer a strawberry plant and when

A pot with rosemary and strawberry which is sending off runners, themselves placed in smaller pots and weighted down with small stones.If you observe that your strawberry plant harvest diminishes year after year, it is time to think of layering them.

This relatively easy and quick technique replaces older, unproductive plants with vigorous productive shoots – for free.

As shown on the picture,

  • Choose a runner that is bearing 1 or more buds.
  • See which of the buds is the most vigorous.
  • Place that bud in a nursery pot filled with soil mix, without burying it entirely (only the base of it should be tightly pressed against the soil).
  • Ensure the bud and the soil mix stay in tight contact with the small metal hoop that you can plant into the nursery pot.
  • Cut the part of the runner opposite to the mother plant off.
  • Water when the soil mix dries up, so as to keep it slightly moist.
  • Once roots have developed well, you can cut the runner and separate your new plant from the mother plant.
  • Plant in the ground in the following spring.

Read also on strawberry plants and strawberries

Credits for images shared to Nature & Garden (all edits by Gaspard Lorthiois):
Runners along driveway by John Sheldon under © CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Strawberry layering by Ariel Mieling under © CC BY-NC 2.0