Excuse the poor pun, but I have been preparing for our exit plan by propagating strawberries today. There’s less than a month before we relocate, and I want to take as many of my favourite plants as possible.

The window-box planter contains about 4 big strawberry plants. These gave us some lovely fruit this June, but by propagating I can leave this ‘parent’ plant behind and take lots of ‘baby’ strawberry plants with me instead of just a few big plants.

Strawberries are really easy to propagate; you just need to pot out the ‘runners’ which the plant produces after fruiting. Its a good idea to do this each year, because having more strawberries is always a good thing.

Using secateurs or scissors, cut the runners from the parent plant. Don’t try to snap or pull them, they are stronger than they look!

The next step is to trim the runners, removing dead leaves and any pests or bugs that are hiding within, and cutting the runner to leave just a few inches of stem with each plant.

Once you’ve trimmed the runner, push it gently into a pot of compost.

Pin the strawberry runner into place using a bent bit of garden wire. If you don’t pin them in place they tend to pop out of the compost and struggle to take root.

Each strawberry plant can produce three or four new plants each year. The cat finds this fascinating.

Almost done. I reckon there’s 19 new strawberry plants here. Hopefully most of them will survive the winter and be super fruitful in their new home.

The last step is to label. I’m determined to label everything in the garden and have no more mysterious plants causing me confusion!

Please do have a go at propagating strawberries if you have the chance. Its super satisfying and keeps your stock of plants youthful and fruitful. I’ve had this strain of strawberries going for almost ten years now, and they’ve provided hundreds of tasty berries for us (and the slugs) to enjoy.