Pineapples

[steev]

I think they like iron sulfate; there was a story about how they produced it for pineapple fields in Hawaii by pouring battery acid on junked cars.

[treefrog]

kevin 8715

hi kevin, i'm raising pineapples here in zone 8b (north florida) i have white jade, smooth cayenne, kona sugarloaf, honey gold, a variegated one that i'm not sure if it's the ornamental or the edible type, and what was sold to me as a sugarloaf which was collected as a survivor of the pineapple industry that flourished in the early twentieth century in punta gorda.

punta gorda survivor (recent pic)

if you have a pup of the pernambuco, i can trade you.  presently, i have k. sugarloaf and variegated mid sized plants (fruit maybe next year?).  i expect to have more pups of the sugarloaf and the p.g. survivor after their fruit ripens (late this summer?)  if the variegated puts on a blossom and fruits this summer, i will also have lots of pups of it.  the white jade, honey gold, and smooth cayenne are midsize to small plants.  next year - maybe for them.

treefrog
jefferson co. fl

[kevin8715]

Update picture tomorrow.

[treefrog]

i have quite a few pineapples. white jade, kona sugarloaf, smooth cayenne, and several others i don't have good i.d. for. i started several years ago, and have developed a system that works well. i'm in the florida panhandle, and we DO have frosts and freezes. i have a greenhouse that i keep at a winter minimum temp of 35f. a few of my pineapples are planted in-ground in the gh, but most of them are in plastic pots, and spend their summers outdoors. the more sun, the bigger the plant. the bigger the plant, the bigger the fruit. when frosty weather threatens, i bring them into the greenhouse and tuck them under the mango and avocado trees to await spring and the great outdoors again. my pineapples are commuters!
pineapples are propagated by offsets - of four main kinds. a) crowns - the leafy top of the fruit, b) slips plantlets that develop on the stem below the fruit, c) suckers which develop between the leaves of the mother plant, and d) ratoons which develop from the roots of the mother plant - usually after the fruit is harvested. it is also possible to produce new plants from seed, but this takes much longer and the results are unpredictable.
not all varieties produce all the kinds of offsets, but each variety makes at least one kind. i treat all the offsets similarly. when i remove it from the mother plant, i pull off a few of the bottom leaves to expose a half inch or so of the core, and the buds from which roots will sprout. i have been told i should let it dry for a day at this point, but i usually don't bother. i plant the little puppy in a 1 gallon plastic pot of soil that's about half coarse compost and half sandy loam. plastic coffee cans work well here. pineapples aren't picky about soil, as long as it drains well. they don't like wet, soggy feet! about a year later, i up - size to a 3 or 5 gallon pot. about another year and it should be ready to blossom, and another six months for the fruit to ripen.
pineapples in the tropics will blossom at any season, but here they seem to be triggered by warming spring temps following winter's cold. they can also be triggered by ethylene or similar gasses, or, even simply by being laid on their side for a week. once the mother plant is big enough, either method will work. if you're not sure what "big enough" is, wait. you'll probably get a bigger fruit. warning! if you lay a potted pineapple on its side to trigger it, be sure to set it back upright in a week/ten days. i forgot one for a couple months, and didn't get a blossom. it went into a frenzy of sucker production. i didn't get a blossom, and subsequent fruit, but i got fourteen new plants!
pineapples are bromeliads they don't have much of a root system, but they are capable of absorbing nutrients through their leaves. they are prime candidates for foliar feeding - and they also love mist type irrigation. i make up a home made mix of foliar feed. two cups potassium nitrate(hi-yield stump remover), one cup magnesium sulfate (epsom salt), a tablespoon of tri-sodium phosphate (from the paint store), and a tablespoon of minor element supplement. i mix this all up, and dissolve two teaspoons of this along with a squirt of chelated iron liquid in a two liter soda jug. i let it sit a couple days then strain it through a coffee filter into another soda jug. this removes any grit that might want to eat the pump on my sprayer. i've got one i like, and want to keep it, but an old "windex" bottle will do. i spray it on the pineapples two or three times a month, spraying until the leaves are wet.
harvest: i usually wait until the yellow or orange color is almost to the top. pineapples, unlike some other fruit, don't get any riper after they are picked. fresh is best. compared to store-bought, you don't know what a good pineapple is until you've tasted a fresh kona sugarloaf!

[richardw]

Ive got a pink leaved type that ive had about two years old, but has never fruited. It stays all year in my tunnelhouse in a larger pot.You are right they dont have much of a root system, they get a bit top heavy and want to fall over.
Might be an idea to gave mine a foliar feed

[treefrog]

richard,

foliar has worked well for me. light/dilute applications, more often seems to be best.

pink leaves? that may be ananas bracheatus. thorns on the leaf margins? bracheatus makes very showy and "edible" fruit, but not one of the tastier varieties. there are some pinkies from india that are said to be really good, but i don't know the variety name. if you wait long enough you'll find out. two years? maybe this spring/summer. (also maybe not - pineapples like to take their time). i have a pink thorny one from "just fruits and exotics" in medart, fl. this spring will be three years, and i'm still waiting.

falling over? i put three bamboo stakes in a triangle around any of mine that are unsteady, and run kite string to stabilize the plant

[steev]

A greenhouse suitable for pineapples is my idea of luxury; when I win the Powerball, it will happen, big enough for a cacao tree, some papaya, and a cashew. Woops! Lost track of where I was, counting those chickens; are they hatching yet?

No idea what varieties they were, but I remember a hardball-sized yellow-fleshed one and a squishy, huge, brown-fleshed one, both in El Salvador, that were far better than the standard commercial Hawaiian pina.

[blueadzuki]

Anyone know anything about this so called Antiguan Black pineapple that I hear such praise about in the food magazines?

[treefrog]

Feb 12, 2016 6:57:22 GMT -5 blueadzuki said:

Anyone know anything about this so called Antiguan Black pineapple that I hear such praise about in the food magazines?

i have heard good things about the antigua black.  if anybody has one to trade, puhleeze! let me know!  i have a mystery pineapple that i bought that had a label that said just "dark."  the guy who sold it to me didn't know anything about it.  maybe it's big enough to blossom this year.  maybe next year.  i have several mystery pineapples.  one of them is the best pineapple i have ever tasted.  it is a survivor of the pineapple industry that flourished in punta gorda fl early in the twentieth century, and was collected on a creekbank.   it is shy about propagating.  i have only the plant i started from the crown of the one i ate, and the mother plant in ground in my greenhouse.  the mother plant has yet to send up suckers. 

[treefrog]

steev,
"when I win the Powerball, it will happen, big enough for a cacao tree, some papaya, and a cashew."

you may need to dip into your powerball winnings not only for a greenhouse, but also a powerful heating system. neither cacao, papaya, nor cashew thrive when temps drop below 50 or 55F. papaya isn't injured until the low thirties, but the fruit is insipid if ripened at less than tropic temps. the other two suffer actual tissue damage starting about 45.

[steev]

I know; I was planning on the heater so I could also have the warm pool for the albino alligator.

[treefrog]

looks like a good year coming up.  i usually start getting blossoms showing around the equinox.  this year, i have three kona sugarloaf blossoms, one honey gold, one variegated showing activity, and the equinox isn't even here yet.  we had a mild winter thanx to el nino.