Help , ants eating my strawberrys and other questions.

I have a strawberry bush (alpine i think) growing out of the top of a bin, it's always full of ants and they are eating my strawberrys.

Also i have another bush in a hanging basket and its got loads of tentacles growing out of it. Can I replant them into pots, do I need to cut them off? Do I just let them hang there?

 

I think Ziggy mentioned in another post that he managed to get rid of ants in a pot by thoroughly soaking it ~ I don't know if you could use a similar technique to deter the ants. Let me know if it works because I'm being plagued by the little b****rs.

You can't just cut the runners off a parent plant and expect them to root. The way you need to do it is to layer the runners by pinning them to a growing medium at the points where leaves are forming. Not going to be easy if they are in a hanging basket, but not impossible with a little ingenuity. Place a 3in pot at the point of the daughter plant and use a twist of wire to secure it to the surface of the compost. In a couple of weeks it should have rooted, and then you can detach it from the parent plant.

This image ( from the University of Minneapolis ) will give you some idea of what I mean ~

 

skinner is pretty much spot on - ants hate the wet, and since strawberries are 90% water, getting them wet and keeping them that way will be of benefit all round.

 

Thanks guys, i've dont that with the daughter plants, soon I will have a wall of strawberrys, fingers crossed.
Interesting point about soaking them, would neem oil help do you think?