Let me say I am not an authority on Strawberries or any thing else,
for that matter. But I have spent most of my 70 years on a farm. I
have posted several time to this forum the last several days, partly
because few people (in this part of the world) are interested in
gardening at this time.

First off, from your posting, I assume you are from Australia and
raising berries in a bucket. If so, I doubt this will help you, but
it is an experience I had.

Many years ago I bought some very large California Strawberries, and I
though how clever it would be to plant some of the seeds. I laid a
few of the berries in an Aluminum pie pan and put them in the window
of my shop. After several days, they had dried and you could easily
rake the seeds from the berry.

To make this story shorter, I planted the seeds,then set out the
plants and they produced a very small inferior berry(not at all like
the berries from which the seed came.). This should answer your
question why they propagate by using the runners.

Another example of this is you can plant the seed of a Red Delicious
Apple and the tree will not bear Red Delicious Apples, but an inferior
fruit.

Now about the runners. If you are raising your fruit in a bucket, I
can't help you, for I have never tried that.

Basically, there are two types of Strawberries, what we call June
berries(which bear in early spring) and ever-bearing. The
ever-bearing, "flush" or put on several crops during a growing season.

Now the action of these berries as I recall is this. First they will
bloom, then set fruit, and then and only then start putting on
runners. Just let these runners go (if they are June berries) and
they will find the ground and set root. In the fall, go in and cut
and dig the ones you want for replacement sets(replace any berry vine
over 3 years old).

Ever-bearing, you have to keep these runners cut back, or they won't
produce very many berries on subsequent crops. But if you need more
plants just let some of your field set runners, and treat them the
same as June berries. I had a small patch of ever-bearing and I used
a small lawn mower to keep the runners cutback out of the middles of
the row.

Didn't mean to write a book
Have a good day, Rogerx.




On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:56:37 -0800, Antipodean Bucket Farmer
wrote:

Hi, Everybody,

Yes, I tried a Google search, but a couple of things
weren't clear.

Right now, it is mid-summer in this part of the world.
I have seven strawberry plants, with good pollination,
plenty of green fruits at the moment, and a small but
steady supply of yummy fruits.

I looked up the idea of harvesting strawberry seeds,
and it seems that people prefer to put the fruit in a
blender(?) This was a surprise for me. I had
*thought* that the seeds were those small green bits
all over the outside of the fruit(?) So I had thought
about using tweezers to pull those off. But maybe that
was mistaken?

The other option is to use runners. I have some
hanging stems (coming out from the middle), with a few
leaves plus flowers and fruits. But I don't see any
starting of roots on these.

Do the runners need to slouch down and get in contact
with some soil before they put out roots?

Also, could anybody explain how to deal with new plants
(from runners) over the winter? Keep them inside
maybe?

Thanks for all of your advice...