TheBanyanTree: A Typical Weekend

[NancyIee at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/2/2007 2:35:17 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
deecee at toast.net writes:

You  actually get an edible pineapple the following year? 
Wowser! If and when  you have both time and inclination, would you pretty 
please tell me  egg-zactly what it is you do to accomplish this? 
 
Dee,
 
Yes, one can buy a grocery store pineapple, eat the fruit, save the top you  
cut off.  Pineapples are bromeliads, or close relatives to them, and  
therefore, don't really need soil, except as an anchor. You could pot them,  though I 
just plop them outdoors. I scrape a bit of soil away, then set the  cut-off 
top upright in the shallow place, pressing the soil around it, enough to  
support it in its upright position.  Of course, they grow best in a  Hawaii-sort of 
place, or in a warm room in a pot.  Spray water into the top  now and then, 
weekly in a dry location.  The soil doesn't have to be wet,  only the tough 
"leaves", since bromeliads get their  water through rain  caught in their 
"leaves." I also fertilize monthly with a regular,  water soluble garden-type 
fertilizer.
 
Mine only took a year to produce a "flower" which is really a tiny  pineapple 
on a spike coming from the center of the plant.  The pineapples  take months 
to grow and ripen.  But, once you experience a REAL pineapple,  the 
store-bought ones are pale by comparison.  Much like REAL, garden  tomatoes as compared 
to the those waxen things in the grocery store.
 
I buy pineapples on sale, and plant a dozen or so at a time. (Yes, I love  
pineapples and eat a lot of them). The real prize is:  once you eat your  first 
real pineapple, you cut the top off . .and replant it.  Closest thing  to a 
perpetual plant, seems to me.

 
Oh, once a bromeliad flowers, it generally dies. But, my old pineapple  
plants seem to be sprouting "pups", from the failing mother plants, so perhaps I  
will get yet more pineapples in the future. I have not tried potting them, so I 
 don't know what success you might experience, or how long it might take.
 
But, it's fun to try.
 
NancyLee



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