📌 Quick Summary: Planting Strawberry Runners in Autumn – September vs. October
- 🍓 The Question: It’s mid-August, and some growers still haven’t planted their new strawberry runner plants. Is it too late, and when is the best time to plant in a cold climate?
- 📅 Best Window: Ludmila recalls a farming-magazine planting trial that put the best time at late July to early August (she doesn’t name the source).
- 🍂 September vs. October: In Ludmila’s experience, September plantings fail fairly often, while her early-October planting had 100% survival. She adds that she may simply have been lucky with the weather that year.
- 🌧️ Other Reports: Maria and Ekaterina both planted in early October 2017 and lost no plants. Maria points out that success depends on the weather: cool temperatures and good autumn rain help, while extreme heat can kill runner plants even in July. All three growers are in USDA Zones 4a–4b (Moscow, Klin and Tver regions).
- 🐈 Bonus – Voles: Ludmila jokes that a Valerian bush will draw in every stray cat in the neighborhood and clear out mice and voles. Ekaterina’s Catmint didn’t attract any cats, so she plans to use rodent bait instead.
I just planted runner plants from my new strawberry varieties to replace the ones I didn’t like (those went straight to the compost). I’ve decided to actually downsize my strawberry beds and only keep the tastiest June-bearing and everbearing varieties. It’s such a labor-intensive berry, and my age is catching up with me, honestly.
On top of that, the voles completely devoured my carrots in one of the beds. I managed to salvage the leftovers just for us to eat now. Next year I’ll have to dig out all the soil and lay down wire mesh at the bottom. The rodents are just insanely active on our property this year!
Maria Suvorova wrote:
I also prepared a small bed for some everbearing strawberry runner plants… But I have absolutely no energy left, and we have guests arriving batch after batch))) But it’s already time to plant them, otherwise, they will struggle to establish…
Masha, a long time ago I read an article in a farming magazine about the best time to plant strawberry runner plants. They ran controlled planting trials and concluded that the absolute best time is late July to early August.
But here is the interesting part: if you compare September plantings to October plantings, the survival rate of October plantings is actually much higher! It’s true, September plantings have a pretty high failure rate, but October? I specifically tested this by planting in the first week of October. I don’t know if I just got lucky with the weather that year, but my survival rate was 100%.
Da4nitsa wrote:
…the voles completely devoured my carrots in one of the beds.
If you don’t have a cat of your own, just plant a bush of Valerian! You won’t have any mice or voles left. Instead, every stray cat in the neighborhood will be visiting your garden to roll in it. I don’t have any mice, but unfortunately, my mole cricket population keeps growing every year.
Aleksan9ra wrote:
…I specifically tested this by planting in the first week of October.
Luda, I suppose the survival rate of the runner plants really depends on the weather. If it isn’t freezing cold and there are good autumn rains, they will establish perfectly fine even in October. But if it’s scorching hot, they might die off even in July.
When we moved into this house in September 2017, I didn’t have time to transplant my strawberries until early October. And in the spring, I had zero losses, everything established perfectly! So maybe I am stressing out for nothing. Whenever I find the time, I’ll go ahead and plant my little runner plants.
Aleksan9ra wrote:
…my survival rate was 100%.
I actually planted my very first strawberries in October 2017 as well, and I also had a 100% survival rate!
As for the Valerian, I have Catmint growing nearby, but apparently, it’s not the right stuff to attract the local cats 🐭… Since I pulled the carrots from that bed, I’m going to lay down some rodent bait, otherwise, I’ll be left without a harvest at all.
