Strawberry Runnering and Leaf Size Depend on Plant Spacing

Abstract

The efforts of plant spacings on runner production and leaf size were examined for ‘Rainier,’ ‘Shuksan,’ ‘Sumas’ and ‘Totem’ strawberry cultivars grown as ribbon rows in a commercial planting. The largest contribution to variation in total runner number in order of importance were the main effects of year, cultivar and spacing. For leaf size the major contributors, in descending order of importance, were the interactions of cultivar by spacing, the three-factor interaction, year by cultivar and year by spacing. Both runner production and leaf size decreased as the spacings became more dense.