How to Prune Your Strawberry Plants

Prune your strawberry plants rigorously during the growing season to prevent prolific runners from turning your strawberry patch into an impenetrable maze. Follow these tested techniques to discipline your strawberries into neat, easily harvested rows.

In the first year your strawberry plants are growing, pinch off all the blossoms that form on the plants. This will store the plants' energy to form fruit for the next season, and seeds as part of the fruit. Continue to pinch back flowers in the following years up to early summer. Allow flowers to form and mature after this point. Use the weed fork to dig up weeds that will choke off the strawberry seedlings in their first year.

Both the June-bearing strawberry and the everbearing strawberry send out shoots from each mother plant, and these shoots also send out runners. In order for the strawberry plants to produce fruit, you must redirect runner production into new base rows to grow more strawberry fruit. Allow the first set of runners to grow out from the mother plant, till the space between main rows is 12 inches wide. Remove all but 6 secondary runners produced from the first runner growth. To do this, locate a main stem where the runner branches off, and pull the runner off carefully by hand completely from the stem.

Step 3: Realign and Root the Secondary Runners

Lift and place the secondary runners so they are 10 inches apart. Once a third set (tertiary) of runners starts to grow off these shoots, press the entire stems and leaves of the secondary runners down 1/2 inch into the garden soil. This will root the tertiary runners, which will produce the strawberries. Secure the tertiary runners with bent twigs or gardening staples to keep them in contact with the garden soil.

Pull off all new runners from the tertiary growth. Be sure not to separate the tertiary runners from the secondary runners or from the original mother plant. In the next growing season, pull off any new runners that form anywhere on the strawberry vines. This focuses the strawberry plants on fruit production.

Everbearing and day-neutral strawberries grow best with this method. Start the mother plants just 12 to 15 inches apart at the crest of a hill. Train the strawberry runners down the hill in paths that spread more widely apart as they descend. Let secondary runners form, pinch off gently all but 6 to 8 runners, and encourage third-generation (tertiary) growth from these vines. As with flat-row growth, pinch back all runners in the second season. Weed ruthlessly around the runners in the first year of growth so they can become established in the garden.

Dig up old fading strawberry vines every 2 to 3 years, and replace them with new secondary or tertiary runners to keep your strawberry patch productive.