Strawberry runners/vertical planting

[PureBlackVoid]

Are you supposed to leave runners to do their own thing (if you don’t mind strawberries spreading of course) or can you pick them off and root them where you want them to go straight away? Or do you have to wait a little while before you can move them?

I am thinking of making a vertical planter type thing like pic but using plastic trough planters (I have a mountain of them sat in the shed doing nothing). I want free up some of my raised beds and this was the cheapest/most convenient as I have everything I need. I am planning on hanging the planters on a mesh panel attached to the fence.

What I’m unsure of is if/when I will be able to ‘steer’ the runners into the pot below if that makes sense. Right now I do very little to the strawberries, just move grown plants around when they get too crowded. The runners do what they like.

My strawberries are in pots along a walkway, so when they grow a runner I push it into a little pot (the 9cm type small plants come in) of soil, using a little bit of wire to peg in into the pot if needed, let it root for a couple of weeks then snip the runner. I let them grow a bit bigger (the ones that came in autumn are overwintering in the greenhouse in their 9cm pots still) then I’ll plant them where I want them.