Propagating Strawberries,.... Again.

As soon as my strawberry bed has finished bearing I immediately go into growing new plants mode.  This is all because my yard suffers from a pest: the Strawberry Root Weevil.  If I leave my strawberries in their bed for a second season, the next spring yields mostly shriveled plants that hardly produce anything.

I’ve never seen an adult weevil in my patch but the roots of the next season’s plants are all eaten by their maggot progeny.  These same weevils will attack the roots of rhododendrons (and leaving bites on the lower leaves) as well as blueberries. 

Over 30 years I’ve unsuccessfully tried growing blueberries.  Three times.  The first time I dug a whole bale of peat into the soil to imitate the soil that blueberries like best.  Failure to thrive.  The third time I started with some healthy plants from my cousin’s place and fed and watered and even mulched with sawdust every third year to no avail.  

I even purchased new, healthy, expensive plants from Minter’s in Chilliwack and set them in, replacing the less healthy ones.  Feed, water, mulch, rinse, repeat – nothing, barely any new growth.  When, after three years I finally pulled out those unhappy new plants -- they lifted up surprisingly easily.  All the new roots had been constantly eaten away as they emerged.

The way I dodge the strawberry root weevil in my strawberries is to move the bed every year to a different location – something you can’t do with blueberries.  I bounce the strawberry bed around the garden as my rotation will allow, always as far away from the last bed as practicable.

Is it worth It?  Oh yes. This year our 20-day picking season gave us 21 lbs. of big, sweet, tasty, organic Shuksan berries.  Far better than anything elsewhere, even at the u-picks or local farm gates.

My Lovely Wife has the berry picking gene -- well maybe it was environmental rather than genetic since she picked as a kid and all her picking earnings went to pay for her private high school tuition.  Once she’s picked the last strawberries I go to work with my pots and potting mix.

My 4 by 12.5 foot bed (50 square feet) has 11 rows of strawberries, each 4 feet long across the bed, each row spaced one foot apart and the plants are spaced one foot apart in the row. 

I set out a pair of 7-inch-high pots, upside down, between the first two rows of strawberries.  Across those two pots I lay a 3 or 4-foot-long 2 X 4.  More raised 2 X 4’s are set up down the bed, each between two rows.   Upon each 2 X 4, I line 4-inch pots filled with potting mix.  I then search out all the strawberry runners that are wandering among the plants and guide the strongest mini runner plants to rest into the pots.

 

From old aluminum wire, I’ve bent some convenient ‘staples’ that help hold the young runner plants into place in each pot.

 

I need 44 new plants, so I guide 50 runners into the elevated pots.  The elevation doesn’t really insulate the new plants from any adult weevils.  After all they can climb walls.  (They are those hard shelled smaller ‘beetles’ that you may find in your house – the ones with the long noses.)  The elevation does help in maintaining the pots of runners.  They need constant inspection in our dry July weather for when to water with a wand.

 

It usually takes them 3 or 4 weeks to develop a good root system and that’s when I cut the runners free from their parent plants.  The pots are then lifted and moved to somewhere in the sun where I can look after them until the main season potatoes are harvested. 

I like to transplant the new strawberry plants into the old spud bed as soon as the pots are just nicely filled with roots.  I’ll describe that procedure later when that happens.

Happy Gardening.