should I give this pineapple a chance?

I think it was summer 2005. I got 2 pineapple tops which I cured and eventually planted inground. All was fine until wintertime when they got pretty ratty and died to the ground. Then they greened up and I had some pretty nice 1' x 1' pineapple plants. Story repeats in 2007. Now, here we are in 2008 and it looks like story will repeat, again.

But I'm tired of this game. Is it possible that they can ever produce fruit with the freezing then coming back to life cycle? I have some very nice roses waiting for this space. But you can see in the pic that it already has 2 nice green leaves coming up.

what do you think?

Given that PF lists it as only hardy to zone 11, I think you're lucky it hasn't died on you! If it's behaved the same way a couple years in a row I suspect if you want fruit you're going to have to keep it somewhere warmer for the winter.

rats. I'm afraid I will have to yank it. I don't have a greenhouse and the only plants I shuttle in and out are my precious plumies.

thanks for your help, as always.

I'm in zone 9b/10 and mine don't die back here but we don't usually get hard freezes here either. Why not put them in a large pot you can bring in during the freezes.

I'm not into shuttling plants in and out, only my precious plumies. I yanked them out yesterday and planted two beautiful roses, Buff Beauty and Safrano, which had been looking for a home.

thanks for the suggestion. Not even worth to give it away, as one can just go buy a pineapple, and plant the top after enjoying the delish fruit.

I might be wrong, but I think you'd have had to wait almost two years to get a fruit off it.

In fact, just checked and read this on another Pineapple site, "It often takes two years or more for a plant to bear fruit in peak growing conditions."

You made the right choice if you didn't want to shuttle it in and out.

Sorry I got here late! That is true about pineapples needing 2 good years to grow in order to produce fruit. I grew them here in Costa Rica and it was in their 2nd year that they flowered and produced a lovely crop for me, lol! Apart from Hawaii, I don't think anywhere in the Continental U.S. has a suitable clime for pineapples. Ofcourse you can always get interesting miniatures that are usually variegated and I think they're commercially grown in greenhouses.

Anyway, enjoy your roses vossner! You did the right thing.
vm


This message was edited Mar 21, 2008 11:36 PM

I'm on the gulf coast of central florida and I have a friend who has had a fruit producing crop of pineapples for years so I have hopes that the 4 I started here this past year will produce.

budgielover: Yes, I certainly hope so too. I didn't mean to sound so final about trying to growing pineapples there, and maybe you have one of the micro climates, where you don't get those cold snaps that set the plants back. I certainly kept trying them again and again when I lived in Canada and only had a cool greenhouse to grow them in Winter. That's certainly quite a bit cooler than the central or gulf coasts of Florida, lol!

Good Luck with your "piñas"!
vm

Vanillaman,
enclosed is a shot of a pineapple nursery a mile from my home here in Naples. They even shade them as too much sun takes the color away and makes them grow too fast.

I was there last Thursday and there was plenty of fruit on their reproduction stock. These plants are sold all over the US but maily for ornamental purposes. The manager told me that the main problem people have with pineapples is too much water and fungus. They like it dry but get an occasional misting of fertilizer.

fred

One other point - I specifically asked about the hard freezes we get here on occasion. As long as it doesn't last more then 6 to 8 hours the damage is minimal. They've never had more then a 10% crop loss and have been growing these things here since 1988. Again, fungus is their main enemy. They regularly spray some kind of commercial fungizide as an infection could wipe out their crop.

This is an ornamental pineapple Ananas 'Ivory Coast'. The nursery forces blooms and fruits but most of their crop will never bloom and isn't designed to. Once a pineapple blooms it also dies. Most gardeners prefer the leaf color and a long lived plant.

one other thing - they grow their ananas in peat and pine bark. They love the acid. The mixture is very important as it provides a bromeliad growth environment. These plants are being readied for potting after they cut the roots off. Once established again they will be packaged for shipment. I watched a truckload being loaded to go to a HD distribution point. Strangely I don't think I ever saw pineapples at Home Depot.

Why do they cut the roots off? It's easier to plant them that way and the plant will have a root system used to the pot.

Thanks fredrump for all that information! I love those small ornamental varieties personally, but then I just love all bromeliads, lol. Naturally they're not for eating, but are certainly very interesting and quite a novelty!

Costa Rica of course, is one of the major pineapple-producing countries in Central America and probably after coffee and bananas, is one of the most important crops for the economy. Some day I'll get some photos of the acres of pineapples growing in the Dole plantations. I know in Canada, almost all the pineapples sold in Supermarkets have the "Costa Rica" sticker on them. It's just too bad they have to ship them so green. I found they were almost impossible to ripen in my kitchen and never had that sweet, juicy, "just picked" flavour like here. They are also very cheap to buy down here, which is a bonus. You all have me wanting to go out and buy one today, lol!

Personally I don't like pineapples or any parts thereof like juice but they do look nice in the garden. :-)

The nursery man said that once a pieapple is picked it stops ripening and therefore sugar production. He also said that the fruit sold in the supermarkets tastes nothing like their fruit grown on the plant til ripe.

They are not in business to grow fruit but to get new suckers they have to. The cut the top of the fruit into at least 8 pieces to grow new plants. Any sliver of the crown can be grown into a new plant. They gave me a ripe pineapple but it's still sitting here. Maybe my wife will eat it. :-)

Fred

fred, I am to understand that man said that 6-8 hr freeze wouldn't affect fruit production or that 6-8 hr freeze wouldn't kill the plant. But still, Naples is warmer than Richmond TX

my mouth waters at the mere thought of a freshly picked pineapple

Same here vossner. It almost tastes like an entirely different fruit than when they're under-ripe or from a can! Makes a great sweet and sour sauce and pineapple upside down cake! Heavy on the whipped cream please.

Voss - I have been growing pineapples in and out of the house for move then 15 years now and they taste 100 times better then the store junk - easy in the house to grow. I would bet when you try again (faith here) that with a little hoop house over the top like we use up here for tropicals is all you would need with some Christmas lights and they would be fine - outdoors and in the ground.

Voss,
he said kill the plant. He also went into a long discussion which I did not understand as to how they force bloom and fruit and inhibit the same with others. Somehow they can control how the plants behave. It was all very technical with manual pollination and such. I was with a group and didn't want to get into a one on one conversation and I'm not going to get into doing the same anyhow. I just got some crowns which I will devide and plant in peat to see what happens.

They had a flood at the farm two years ago and lost about 10% even after vigorous fungus control. The pineapples I had here in my garden were getting the typical irrigation water which probably caused their demise. Now I know better.

fred

PS the man compared store bought tomatos to store bought pineapples. He said both taste artificial in comparison to natural ripened fruit. MitchF an vanillaman know what they're talking about.

My mother in law grows pineapples in 9b. They taste great.

Yuk, tomatoes in Canada in Winter. They are tasteless and way overpriced! I know they're out of season and have to come from Florida or California, but those varieties are bred specially for staying firm and to be able to travel and store for long periods. Strawberries are just as bad, lol! Nothing compares to home-grown, fresh-picked tomatoes and strawberries. Of course they are much better when they are locally in season I should add. You can get better varieties. Even down here where they grow year round, they're some tasteless hybrid. I'm growing my own now!

Sorry for the rant.
vm

Everything tastes better when fresh. I took 2 stalks of finger type bananas to work the other day. The top rows were yellow and the lowers ones turning or still green but nice & plump. Most of my co-workers had never seen them on the natural stalk and feasted on them throughout the day. We left the green ones out to ripen over the weekend. They couldn't believe how much sweeter and fresher they tasted than the store bought ones.

Can't wait for the pineapples. If only my lychee were more reliable I would be in 7th Heaven. I am going to plant 1-2 more trees so hopefully I can get a few each year. Unfortunately, lychees are hit or miss each year and I love them.

I have a lychee too but so far it has yet to bloom. I bought it small and now it's about 5 feet tall but very bushy. I guess three years is not enough to reach maturity. I've yet to see one of those fruits.

While we are on fruits - I have a mango bush (many branches which came out of the ground after a freeze). Last year I saw 6 mangoes which my neighbor ate as I wasn't around at the time but this year I must have a million of them. They are causing the branches to hang onto the ground from the shear weight. I'm going to try to tie the central branches together to give them a firm center and then bring up and tie the surrounding branches to the center.

I've never eaten a mango. Don't know why the sudden abundance of fruit. I had the same massive fruit harvest on a nearby starfruit tree. Must be in the weather.

Fred

Fred,
With the lychee it depends on if it was started from seed or air layer. Seed started trees take up to 10 years to bear whereas air layer usually 3 yrs or so. Mine was in the ground and bloomed the 3rd year in ground. It produced only a few fruit which got blown away during the Charlie season in one of the high winds that came through. The following year it producing a whopping 21 fruit to maturity and I savoured 1 per day. LOL Last year and this year, nothing but has put out a bit of growth and is still only 4-5 ft tall. They say not to fertilize them as they burn easily but I am going to trim and add some compost this year and see what happens.

We got off the pineapple track but what the heck...

My lychee is sprouting new growth like crazy. Here's a picture. I have no idea how it was grown or even where I bought it but it was really, really small compared to today. At first I thought it wouldn't even grow here but now he/she seems to be quite happy. :-)

Fred

and here's my mango

fruit is hanging heavy

Just to add my 2 cents worth on lychees! Sometimes trees started from seed will never flower, like seed started oranges. They've fun and very ornamental though. To be really sure, it's best to buy a cultivar that will bear fruit or take cuttings from a tree that you know is a good one. I have a few lychee cuttings rooting now because I want to plant them at my new place when I move next month.

Yes, bananas are so good when they're freshly picked too, like pineapples etc. I have them coming out of my ears here, but my doctor says it's ok and not serious, lol! At the moment I've got about 5 huge bunches almost ripe. I give lots away or feed them to the birds here. Maybe I should sell some so they don't go to waste and I can get a few bucks to buy another plant or 2. By the way, I've noticed that the hummingbirds seem to be the major pollenator here, which was surprising. I didn't thing the flowers would attract them, but I guess there must be a lot of nectar in them. The hummers can't leave them alone!

These are my mangoes!

Mangos.. fresh mangos.. now that is something I have been dying for from the day I left the tropics. The junk in the stores just is nothing to compare.... I hear there are minis now that will grow on a patio - anyone know of a lead for one of those? (like I need more tropical fruit to take care of!)

Mitch,
Pine Island Nursery carries what they call condo mangos. They can be maintained at 6 to 10 ft.

vanillaman,
I have all these pots of orange tree seedlings which I gathered from under a tree that died. You mean I'm wasting my time even planting them for fruit?

I had no idea that seed started oranges don't bear. Seems unnatural to me. Why would they even have seeds then?

On your bananas. It sees to me that bananas on a tree take forever to ripen. I had two similar bunches and I cut one down around Christmas or at the latest in January. They ripened nicely and were quite sweet and delicious. I left another bunch on a tree. Nothing happened there and I finally cut that bunch down too as the tree was leaning against my garage. I now have those bananas waiting for them to ripen. I have more left on my trees in the back but they are smaller and not yet ready. I'm going to wait until they ripen right on the tree. I have to take a picture of the stem of one of those guys. It's huge for this 10b semi-tropical region.

Hey fredrump! I'm not an expert, but it seems it's because most seeds we would have, come from hybrids and cultivars, rather than the true species oranges, so the genes are basically "screwed up" for lack of a better phrase. Here is a link I hope sheds some light on the subject. Of course that's not to say your's will not produce. It's just basically "luck of the draw". You could end up with some fantastic new hybrid that produces record crops, lol!

http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6602

About bananas, yes I find the same thing, as far as ripening. They do take a long time. I keep looking at them and thinking "a few more days" or "just another week" and then a month later they start to turn slightly yellow. If you cut them too green, they won't ripen, but if you wait too long, they all ripen too fast and you end up with about 100 or so ripe bananas. That's a lot of banana bread or banana cream pie to have to make! The trees look really crappy too for quite a while when they are ripening. All the leaves have died and are brown because the plant has completed its growth cycle and is putting all its energy into those ripening fruit. It's quite a noveltly to get them to flower and produce, but I think they look a lot better as juvenile plants, when they are producing those exotic leaves. Just my opinion!

Ohhh gonna have to go shopping now...

sooo. back to pineapples.... how do you cut the top to grow a new plant??? leave some of the fruit, or none, or what???

ck this out on how to grow


http://www.rickswoodshopcreations.com/Pineapple/pineapple.htm

thanks!!

The link to Rick's Woodshopcreations covers pineapple reproduction quite well but I would like to add a couple things. He talks of getting rot. This is a result of too much water and fungus. The less water, the more success. Think of orchids.

Also, he plants the whole crown and suggests buying two pineapples to have a better success ratio. The growers cut the crown into as many pieces as possible to obtain a new plant. They would never increase their yield if they had to plant one pineapple to get one pineapple. You should be able to get at least 4 plants from one crown and can try for 8.

As to planting medium - use lots of peat and ground up bark. I didn't see any perlite at the pineapple nursery, just mountains of peat. Also, when they planted the newly rooted seedlings in individual pots, they had a little mount of dynamite right in the center of the pot.

I'm about to try all of the above a little later today.

Fred

i'm gonna leave it as one piece, as space is limited in the GH tell me how the dividing plan works out

Will do.