Question
I don't know if you guys are the right folks to ask, but we're organic gardners (in that we use no chemicals and rely heavily on natural fertilizers, etc.). We have two questions:

Strawberries:  What is the difference, if any, between the baby strawberry plants at the end of the runners the mature plant sends out, and the strawberry plants you buy at the nursery?

Raspberries:  Every year we prune out the old canes at the end of the growing season, letting the new shoot take over.  In weeding the raspberries, we're now finding that many of the large root clumps (for lack of an official term) have died, as have the corresponding cane for this year.  However, this doesn't appear to be happening in our newer row (we transplanted volunteers to make a new row 3 years ago).  Question is, do raspberry plants exhaust themselves after so many years, necessitating replacement? Or is there something wrong with our beloved raspberries?

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Lee Anne

Answer
Strawberries: there is no difference between strawberry runners and nursery plants (except maybe the variety), and you can cut them off after they root, transplant them, and have a new plant.  

It is also best to keep the main plant only three years or so, since the large clumping actually decreases production of fruit.

You could have three patches, a new one, last years, the year before, and the three year old bed - from which you would remove the clumps, re-condition it, and plant new runners in place of old plants .

Also, if you want the mother plant to produce more straberries, cutting the runners off encourages that.

Raspberries:  they do get diseases -  cane blight, canker, anthracnose, powdery mildew, rust, or gray mold, Verticillium wilt, fireblight, etc.   I would talk a sample to an agriculture extension office and see if they can determine the problem...