I attempted to root and plant a pineapple for many months, about 2 years ago. They never took before I got to busy with Graduate school and work.

Last week I was doing my weekly round of quick watering all the potted plants and i found one of the pineapples I had planted had actually taken! I'd not seen it because I only have time to water at night, and this was in a pot in a lone corner of the property. The plant is about 16 inches high and spreading pretty wide.

It currently gets plenty of light, but only about 6 hours of direct sunlight.

The weather is supposed to get REALLY cold here (Santa Paula, Ventura County) in the next few nights. Would it be sufficient to simple throw a blanket on the plant over night? Of do I need to bring it inside?

Pineapple plants require a frost-free environment. They are small enough to be easily covered when frost threatens, but cold weather adversely affects the fruit quality. A freeze can kill your plant. For your information: your pineapple will begin to fruit when the plant is about 4-feet wide. - Millet

Are pineapples like most citrus where they ripening during cold weather peroids or do they have a certain time that they bloom and fruit like apples, blue/black/strawberries.

Cold has nothing to do with pineapples producing fruit. Commercial areas where pineapples are grown, like Hawaii, never see cold. They bloom when they have grown enough in size to become mature plants. The pineapples sold in the supermarket, generally produce fruit when the plant is about 4-feet wide. Currently I have 14 pineapples growing. At various size plants, 2 are currently producing fruit.- Millet

Millet, may I argue just a bit -- I agree that cold SHOULD never have anything to do with flowering in pineapples -- that is to say, they should never get that cold. However, like all bromeliads, the stimulus to flower is ethylene gas (quite an unusual effect for ethylene in the plant kingdom, but apparently always the main trigger in bromeliads), and one of the effects of cold damage -- temps in the 40s F or colder will do it -- is that the leaves will tend to give off ethylene. So, here in central Florida, if we get a cold snap, yes, all outdoor-grown pineapples will synchronously set flowers, whether they're ready or not. Small plants end up making tiny pineapples. So we try to protect plants from even chilly, let alone freezing weather, if we don't want flowers just then.
Malcolm

I am quite surprised how long it is taking to root a pineapple top. It is now over two months. The top is actually growing but the roots are only few millimeters long and the new leaves are two inches. I originally thought they were a lost cause just left them there and then I saw new leaf growth.

Three years ago I moved, before the moved I gave all my friends a bottle of pineapple wine, a product of Hawaii. I am not a wine drinker but heard it was like pineapple juice with a kick.

I rooted a pineapple but gave it away -- to someone I didn't like LOL. They are deadly sharp! Millet, are you on a suicide mission growing 14 of them?? Don't those razor sharp leaves ever cut you when you walk by? OUCH!
I also have a bromeliad flower (same family) -- a pup from another bromeliad that I got to flower by putting cut up apple into plant & closing up in a clear plastic bag for 3 days. It produces the ethylene gas that triggers it to flower. No luck with this 2 1/2 yr pup so far. More apples.

An easy and quick way to root a pineapple, which virtually always works, and with little chance of rotting:

Twist (don't cut) the top from a fruit. This will make it break at the proper spot. Break off a dozen or more leaves from the bottom, exposing 3/4 of an inch of bare stem. Notice that there are already little roots there!

Set the cutting on the kitchen counter, completely exposed and unprotected, for a week. NO WATER. During that time, the injured surfaces will dry out and heal. It won't hurt the cutting at all to go without water -- I've kept them for over a year, and they were still alive!

Then plant the top in a pot of soil. That's it!

Pineapples, like most bromeliads, maintain roots in their leaf axils, so an efficient way to fertilize them is to use dilute liquid fertilizer, poured into the center of the plant. Some may spill out onto the soil, but you really don't care if it does or not -- the plant can get all the nutrition it needs from those roots in the crown.

Another interesting nutritional fact about pineapples -- they are one of the few crops on which it is safe to use liquid iron products to control iron deficiency. On many plants, iron solutions tend to be phytotoxic, but pineapples can take a much higher concentration than most. On the other hand, we never use an iron supplement on ours, since they don't seem to need more than is in the Peters, Miracle Grow, or other liquid we feed with.

Malcolm

Can you "force" them to bloom? Most decorative bromeliads can be "forced" to bloom with ethylene. Easier said than done with pineapple. I put my bromeliads in a plastic garbage bag then take an apple and split it in half, put it in the bag and seal it overnight. The ripening apple gives off ethylene. I have a few dwarf pineapples that I might try.

Yes, they are easily stimulated to flower with any type of application of ethylene. The apple-in-a-bag method is often used by gardeners. If you can get a bit of calcium carbide, you can put a split-pea-size pellet into the crown of the plant and pour a cup of ice water over it, just after sunset. The ice water is to keep the mixture cool, since calcium carbide gets hot when added to water. The time of day is important, since pineapples are much more susceptible to the stimulation after dark. Don't try this in the house, since it stinks terribly, and gives off acetylene, which is highly flammable.

Commercially, most of the world crop is artificially stimulated to flower, so that entire fields can be picked at once. The most common material used is ethephon, a liquid which gives off ethylene on exposure to air and light.

I have 14 pineapples growing in the ground in my greenhouse, all started from pups. The pineapple plants are all sizes. Two of them are presently setting fruit. One fruit, that attained full mature size late in November has stalled. Because of the price of propane, I have been keeping the greenhouse at 50 at night. (Last year my greenhouse heating bill was over $4,000.00) I have noticed that the fruit has not been ripening, and I presume it is due to the low temperatures. However, the plants remain healthy looking.

Millet
1,452 Remaining

I have just successfully rooted two pineapple tops using Dr. Manners' method except I put them into 100% chunky vermiculite instead of soil. I thought I may have screwed up because I didn't see any roots and some of the old leaves looked like they were starting to rot and I almost tossed them but decided to just leave them for a while. I came back a few weeks later and saw roots starting to develop on the wall of the container (I was using clear 2 L coke bottles with the top cut off).

I'm curious to know what type of soil most people use to pot these in once they've rooted. Dr. Manners mentioned that the plant can get most of its nutrients through roots in their leaf axils:

Quote:

Pineapples, like most bromeliads, maintain roots in their leaf axils, so an efficient way to fertilize them is to use dilute liquid fertilizer, poured into the center of the plant. Some may spill out onto the soil, but you really don't care if it does or not -- the plant can get all the nutrition it needs from those roots in the crown.

Based on this, could I stick with vermiculite as the potting media? I like the way it drains but am not sure if the plants have other soil needs like a specific pH or if they'd prefer to have a soil that maintains more moisture.

I have grown several to fruit using compost--both commercial composted cow manure and from my yard compost pile.

The only real problem I see with growing them in vermiculite is that when they have a big fruit on top, they'll be very top-heavy, and may rip themselves right out of the pot.

That said, they're not at all picky about the growing medium. We most often use pure Canadian peat. They don't mind the low pH at all. But any potting soil should work, too.

I agree with the method of getting Pineapples to grow, twist the tops, pull the leaves off, trim the base with a sharp knife to expose a few of the rootlets, let it dry... then I suspend them in a jamjar of water, much like you might do with an avocado stone until the roots grow, I then transfer them to a pot outside (inside in the winter here in the UK).

I have two that have survived nearly 2 years now. They are growing slowly and I doubt if they will ever fruit... but the method for getting them started works fine.

Richard