hello everyone,
ive been thinking about starting a pineapple plant this fall, alot of sites say that fall is a good time to start them.they say to cut the pineapple crown off along with about an inch of fruit below it. then they say to let it sit in an inch or so of water for about two days before "burying" it in an 8" pot. when they say bury, do they mean actually put the whole crown in the soil? or just to bury the fruit part?
any help is appreciated and wanted!
thanks,

just the fruit part plus about 1/2" of the crown stem above the fruit, be sure to remove the lower leaves to expose the stem before burying, I mean, planting.

thanks joe! you always give the best advice!!

Usually when a new plant is started from the top of a harvested pineapple, the top is set out for a couple days to let the pulp dry. When a fresh top is planted, many times it will rot. After you get one pineapple grown, the mother pineapple will send out 2-5 side pups (suckers) which you can plant. After reading a post by Dr. Malcolm Manners, which was posted on this forum 6 - 9 months ago, concerning the great length of time a pineapple pup will last, I decided to do an experiment. I removed 4 pups from a harvested pineapple plant and just let them lay on a greenhouse bench for TWO MONTHS (perhaps it was even 3 months). Because of the length of time, the leaf ends had dried down about 1 -2 inches turning white. I then planted them in a raised bed in the greenhouse, and still had a 100 percent success rate. Presently one of those pups is now maturing. For the best taste, pineapple fruit that are left on the plant until completely ripe, produce 2 - 3 times the sugar content as compared to commercial pineapples that are picked green and then shipped. With the pups taken from the present pineapple crop, I am going to plant one pup at intervals of every two/three weeks so that I can have a continuous harvest year around. - Millet

There are other reasons why the fruit part is also planted. Some of the reasons could be to encourage beneficial microbes and to acidify the soil. Pineapple stem doesn't rot as quickly as speculated by others. But this will depend if there are disease pressures related to the roots and their establishment. It is going to take a long time before the pineapple crown will die. Besides, in nature, some fruits should rot so that it can degrade the inhibitors surrounding the seeds for easy germination when favorable time comes. It doesn't mean that all the rotting decompositions of the fruits will only lead to root rot, or that only pathogenic organisms are encouraged. There are other microorganisms, plus the fact that pineapple itself is hardy and can wait it out.

The best method to propagate pineapples is through the suckers or pups. The crown method is not the recommended one, it is the longest to fruit, and problematic in terms of vigor, but oftentimes your only option. If Millet can send us suckers our way, then we too can have pineapples should we have greenhouses.

Pineapples are not cold hardy. Perhaps if we can find something that will be cold hardy to zone 9, then that would be the day I'll grow them. Yes, I have a pineapple which I faithfully bring to the garage every winter when temperature falls below 40 deg F. It stays there without watering until it warms up again above 40 deg F minimum temp and bring it out to its same spot.

About how long does it take for them to start to fruit? I took a "pup"(?, not a top) from Bill Whitman's patch back in 2005.

I don't know how long it takes a pineapple to fruit when grown outside. I assume it totally depends on the average day and night temperatures. Inside my greenhouse with minimum winter night time temperatures of 60F and daytime highs of 70 - 95F (depending on the season of the year) a pup will grow a mature fruit in 10 to 12 months. Generally, when the plant nears 4-feet across a pineapple plant will begin to fruit (commerical varieties). Once you get a pineapple to harvest, you will never run out of pups for the next generation. With the last generation I left some of the pups attached to the mother plant until they reached a height of 1-foot and perhaps 8 - 9 inches wide, before I cut them off, in an attempt to obtain a quicker turn around. If you want a fast fruiting variety, plant papayas. From seed to fruit in less than a year, when gown in a hot and humid greenhouse environment. - Millet

I am growing a pineapple from the crown of a fruit-- I cut the crown off, but later read it is better to twist it off. I peeled off about 1 1/2 inches of the lower leaves to expose the "eyes" where roots will come out and left the top outside on my patio to dry for a little over a week. Then I planted it so that the lower leaves were just above the soil. It is now over a foot across and growing great.

wow, thanks guys...
out of curiosity, when you say the mother plant will send out 2-5 smaller pups, do they grow out of the soil next to the mother plant or do they grow in the soil on the side? also, you say it must have already grown a pineapple for it to produce pups, or did i misunderstand you? sorry for all the questions, your answers have been very helpful!

p.s. joe, when you say pineappless are cold hardy, do you think they would be able to survive temps at around 38-40F (extremely rare that it gets much colder than that) for a few days or should i bring it in for the whole time it reaches those temps?
thanks!

beau, you should get by as Harvey have stated. Unlike in my yard of zone 9, they will surely die outside when left out during the winter.

The suckers of pineapples come off from the sides, mostly above ground, but depending on cultivar, some would shoot from under the ground. You can easily snap them off and plant.

okay, thanks guys,. your information has been extremely helpful!