Do old strawberry plants produce runners indefinitely?

[Ahappycamper]

General consensus seems to be that strawberry plants should be replaced after X amount of years because the fruiting becomes less productive with each passing year. Berries get smaller and come in lesser amounts. Does that also apply to runner production too? If you keep a batch of strawberry plants around just to produce runners and new plants, will they become less effective and efficient with each passing year? Would the runners being produced be of lesser quality or anything?

I have a bed of strawberries that are strictly used for runners and a few that are strictly for berries. The bed that is strictly for berries gets replaced with new plants every so often(sources say up to 1-3 years) for higher quality berries. I allow my strawberry runner bed to keep putting out new plants and that would be great if i could keep using the same plants there to produce runners over and over

I separate the runner producing plants from the berry producing ones because ive read that allowing plants to produce berries and runners is too taxing and that you should let your plant do one or the other but not both

Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[zigs]

Good question

Not sure about leaving them in situ but I've often potted up old strawberry plants and they've thrown out loads of runners.