With so many people looking for safe, fresh food, and discovering the wonderful flavors of home-grown berries, everyone is wanting to grow their own. Strawberries are definitely the easiest of fresh fruits to grow, and give a full crop in their first summer – so much easier and faster than planting peaches and apples. Maybe you don’t even have a garden, or your existing one is full? Why not try growing strawberries in hanging baskets around your balcony or porch? The Snowy Belle™ Strawberry, a new introduction in the Bushel & Berry® range of fruits for home gardens, is an outstanding variety for this. It’s everbearing, so it blooms and fruits from June to September, and this vigorous plant sends out lots of hanging stems that soon turn into smaller plants also carrying berries. It makes a beautiful sight, as decorative as flowers, but also productive, and of course it can be grown out in the garden too. Not only does this variety have a delicious flavor, thanks to its high levels of natural sugars, it has up to 50% more Vitamin C than other everbearing strawberry varieties. Sweeter – healthier – tastier – more vigorous and productive – we’re running out of superlatives!

Growing the Bushel & Berry® Snowy Belle™ Strawberry

Size and Appearance

The Snowy Belle™ Strawberry is a perennial plant that forms a mound of leaves growing 8 to 10 inches tall. This vigorous plant soon sends out long hanging stems that transform into many smaller plants, spreading across the ground or cascading from boxes and hanging baskets. The dense clump of leaves rises from the ground, each leaf on a stem 6 to 8 inches long. This divides at the end into three leaflets, which are oval, with a serrated edge and up to 3 inches long. They are an especially rich dark green, making this plant very attractive.

By June long stems will have grown up and cascaded over as they divide and divide again to make a big spray of flower buds. These open into pretty white flowers, with 5 petals making a bowl containing a bright yellow center of bushy stamens. The flowers quickly turn into tiny green berries that grow so quickly you can almost watch them do it. Before long they are large oval berries, bright red, tender, sweet and delicious. New flower clusters develop more or less continuously, added to by clusters that develop on the hanging plants too, and you will be picking berries almost every day from June right through September.

Using the Bushel & Berry® Snowy Belle™ Strawberry in Your Garden

You can certainly grow the Snowy Belle Strawberry in garden beds, where it looks charming, and you might consider the Pink Belle or Red Belle Strawberry for that too, as they have more colorful flowers. We highly recommend the Snowy Belle Strawberry for pots, planter boxes, window boxes, tubs, and best of all, hanging baskets. With its long trailing plants it makes a beautiful cascading plant, carrying strawberries all over its branches. You can even grow it on a window sill, if you have no other outdoor space.

Hardiness

The Snowy Belle Strawberry is hardy from zone 5 to zone 8, growing best in zones with moderate temperatures.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Full sun will give you the best growth and fruit development from the Snowy Belle Strawberry. It could take an hour or two of shade each day, but no more. In the garden the soil should be rich and well-drained. For planters and baskets, use regular houseplant potting soil, or if available, potting soils for outdoor planters and baskets. Make sure your container has drainage holes, and you can use wire baskets lines with fiber mats, or plastic hanging baskets. Feed your container plants every two weeks with a liquid fertilizer high in potassium, such as tomato food, or special strawberry food if available.

Maintenance and Pruning

This vigorous plant is going to be normally free of pests or diseases if watered correctly and growing in good conditions. Minor insect problems can be dealt with using our safe, non-toxic and all-natural Neem Oil Spray. In late fall cut back all the foliage and excess trailing plants close to the ground, and store baskets on the ground if possible, covered with a burlap sheet if you live in colder zones. Plants will fruit well for up to three seasons. After that, take some of the small hanging plants and replace the old plants with those – you can even increase the number of plants you have.

History and Origin of the Bushel & Berry® Snowy Belle™ Strawberry

The first garden strawberry was created in France in the 1750s. Before that only wild strawberries were grown. It is a hybrid plant, called Fragaria × ananassa, from a cross between the beach strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis, first found in Chile, and the American wild strawberry, Fragaria virginiana. Since those times many varieties have been developed, including a group of strawberries called ‘everbearing’, that fruit continuously, not just in June. ABZ Strawberries is a Dutch breeder of seed-grown F1 hybrid varieties, and in 2001 they were given European Plant Breeder Rights on a variety they called ‘Elan’. This variety has been released in America, where it is waiting for patent approval, with the trademarked name of Snowy Belle™, a new release by Star® Roses and Plants in their Bushel & Berry® fruit bush range, created for home growers.

Buying the Bushel & Berry® Snowy Belle™ Strawberry at the Tree Center

Our growers raise every plant of the Snowy Belle Strawberry from ABZ’s special seed, so it conforms exactly to the characteristics of the variety. Branch out this summer, and lift your fruit growing to a hanging garden, with this great plant. But order right away, because everyone is growing their own berries, so don’t miss out on the fun.