Elsanta strawberry questions

[gardening_gal]

Bit of advice please?

My Elsanta strawberry plants have stopped giving fruit and I am planting the runners from them at present. Once the runners have rooted properly and I have cut the new plantlets off, what happens with the original mother plant?

All my plants are in pots, so do I just cut the plant back and that's it until next year? Obviously I'd still need to water it enough to keep it alive but I assume I don't feed it anything and it will just be dormant?

Is it ok to move the pots out of the best sunny spot in the tunnel and into to a corner with a bit less light now? I'm not sure how much light they will actually need at this stage, could I put the pots on shelves? Obviously the light would be even less for the ones on the bottom shelves, would this matter as much now?

Edit: I'm actually now wondering if I can turf them out of the polytunnel completely and sit them at the back of it? Would the plants suffer from the change in temps? I'm assuming I wouldn't need to go through the hardening off process for plants that are decreasing in growth?

[WendyC]

I wouldn't cut back just yet, only to tidy any dead or dying leaves. As they are in pots I think you will need to keep feeding them a general feed as it needs to build up reserves to give you a bumper crop next year. Come the Autumn I give my strawberries a really good tidy up.
They are hardy plants so don't need the protection of the poly tunnel and as long as they are not in complete darkness you could move them to a less choice spot now. They won't need hardening off unless the leaves are really soft and sappy when it would be the wind which would damage them more than the temperature change.

[gardening_gal]

Thank you!