Get It Growing: Ask a Master Gardener — Propagating strawberry plants from runners

Published 3:30 am Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Q: Can you propagate a strawberry plant from its runners? Our neighbor has a wonderful strawberry patch. The strawberries are not too big, but very sweet and juicy. She has offered us baby plants. Should we take her up on it?

A: Tasty homegrown strawberries? Free plants? Who could resist?

Many commercial growers and home gardeners use the runners from strawberry plants to increase the size of their strawberry patch. Propagation using runners, however, comes with a few risks. If you are tempted, please read on.

A strawberry plant is a low-growing herbaceous plant with a compact stem (called a crown). The compact stem produces leaves, flower clusters, and new crowns. It also produces runners.

Runners are the plant’s natural means of propagation. Runners consist of a horizontal stem that runs above the ground and has joints. At the joints, the runners produce baby plants (called daughters or plantlets).

The daughter plants first produce a cluster of leaves, then short roots (called pegs). If their roots come in contact with soil, they will try to grow into the soil. Daughter plants also can put out runners themselves even before they establish roots in the soil.

The daughter plant is a clone of the mother plant and has the same genetic makeup and characteristics as the mother.

The problem with propagating using runners is twofold.

• The daughter plants sap nutrients and water from the mother plant until they root in the soil, thereby weakening the mother.

• Daughter plants also are likely to be infected with any disease that affects the mother plant. If transplanted to a new site — such as the garden of a neighbor — the daughter plants will spread these diseases to the new location.

Recommendations

To minimize the burden of runner propagation on the mother plant and limit the spread of diseases, follow these steps.

Propagate strawberries using runners only from June-bearing strawberries. June-bearing strawberries are vigorous plants that produce one large crop of berries in late spring and early summer and an abundance of runners after the harvest. Because of the vigor of the plants and timing of runner production, using runners to propagate more plants will have minimal impact on berry production among June-bearers.

Conversely, remove all runners from everbearing and day-neutral strawberry plants. These types of strawberries produce berries throughout the summer. The production of runners will direct the plant’s energy away from fruit production to the development of the daughter plants and the harvest will suffer.

Use runners from young, healthy-looking mother plants. Avoid plants with signs and symptoms of disease such as misshapen or oddly colored leaves, leaf spots, discolored roots, wilting, or stunting.

It is best to use runner plants produced within a year or two after the mother was planted. As the mother plant ages, the size of its runner plants will decline, and the mother is more likely to become infected with diseases. Use of young mother plants means the daughter plants will be bigger and less likely to be diseased.

Choose daughter plants with a few healthy leaves and roots that are not rooted in the soil. This selection minimizes damage to the daughter’s roots during transplant and prevents the spread of soilborne diseases and pests to a new location.

If there is more than one daughter plant on a runner, use only the first one to emerge. It is usually the one closest to the mother plant. Remove all other daughter plants on that runner to prevent sapping of nutrients from the selected daughter plant and mother.

If you are filling in the original planting row, move the selected daughter plant while it is still attached to the mother by the runner stem to the desired spot. Pin the daughter plant in place with a bent piece of wire, bobby pin, or landscape staple to ensure root contact with the soil.

If transplanting the daughter plant elsewhere, place the daughter plant, still attached to the mother, into a small pot filled with a light potting medium, making sure the roots are in direct contact with the soil. Do not bury the daughter plant. Pin the daughter plant in place and do not disturb it until its roots have grown into the soil.

Keep the soil moist but not soggy. Watering the daughter plants using a spray bottle will prevent dislodging the establishing roots from the soil.

Once the daughter has grown a few new leaves and extended its roots into the soil, clip the runner stem leading to the mother plant. The daughter can now support itself and be transplanted to its permanent spot in the garden.

It takes daughter plants about three to four weeks to root, so start the process in mid- to late summer, right after the June-bearing harvest. Daughter plants rooted after early September are unlikely to produce quality fruit the next growing season.

One final note of caution: Many strawberry cultivars are patented and can only be reproduced by licensed nurseries. Only propagate those you know are not patented.

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Jeanette Stehr-Green is a WSU-certified Clallam County Master Gardener.