Hydroponic Strawberries, Part 2 - Blossoms and Runners! Days 38-39

Day 38: April 6th, 2018

These freeloading strawberry plants have been living the life in their AeroGrow hydroponics system. Having the very best LED lighting, distilled water, and the right dose of liquid plant food, you would expect they would be bursting with fruit! But alas, this was a very wrong expectation. Over three weeks ago, I trimmed off the first blossoms, to let the plants mature a little more so they would provide a better production later on, but I didn’t expect it to be an eternity!

Day 38: April 6th, 2018

Finally, on day 36 I spotted a couple buds on one of the plants, and then on day 38, a pretty little blossom! Only one plant has graced me with new blossoms, so I was a little confused, as some of the other plants are significantly larger than the one that has most recently produced blossoms.

Day 39: April 7th, 2018

My confusion was abolished when I spotted this sneaky little runner. Strawberries are sneaky little plants that can be started by seed, or started by a runner. Runners take a lot of energy for the parent plant to support, so these little leeches should be trimmed off as soon as you spot them if you are trying to produce strawberries.

If you are in need of new strawberry plants, I recommend letting a plant send off a single runner (trim off the rest), and when the runner becomes an established enough plant, you would separate it from the parent plant. This method is far quicker than trying to establish a new plant from seed.

Turns out, when I trimmed off the one runner, I spotted a second one! No wonder my plants aren’t producing any blossoms! They were trying to make little baby plants!

Day 39: April 7th, 2018

Now that I have trimmed off these runners, let’s hope the rest of the plants stop freeloading!

If you missed part one, you can check it out at Hydroponic Strawberries, Part 1 - First 33 days!

Disclaimer: I'm not being sponsored for writing this article. Just sharing my experience with the world, and wanting to track progress of this system in case I start up another.