I'm sure you will get better advice than I can offer, but I can give you some encouragement. I planted six pineapple tops probably two years ago about this time of the year. I cut them or twisted them off and stuck them in a potting mix in one gallon pots. They all rooted and grew. I gave three of them to neighbors who had never tried to grow pineapples, and I kept three. They all grew and made fruit and one neighbor is still getting fruit from the offsets. I was able to shelter them in my greenhouse the first winter, but after that they were outside in the ground. One neighbor had her's in full sun. My backyard neighbor has his in shade. Mine were in morning sun. So, I'm thinking they are not that fussy.

Good luck john

Hi
Got to be the worlds easiest plant to grow .lol Only problem I've encountered was rot when first started .
While esy to grow have found the fruit far inferior in size and quality. But I'd bet with a regular feeding program you could overcome that.??
Be patient they are slow . gary

They are the easiest plant to grow. I cut the top off about an inch from the leaves. Leave it dry out a little, say a day or two. Then you can pot or stick them in the ground. I just cover the fruit part, not the leaves. If you put it in a pot make sure it is big enough. It usually takes 2 years to fruit but I don't water or fert. mine. They are inground.
The fruit is smaller but I find them sweeter than the big ones. Maybe if I had composted them they would have been bigger?

Yep, all of the above. I grow them from the grocery store pineapple tops too. Mine have fruited 2 times now and the plants do get really big. The last pineapple was nearly as big as the store bought ones.

To avoid the threat of rot, it is better to twist the top off the pineapple and let it dry a few days, no extra flesh stuck on it that way. My plants grow incredibly large when in a lot of organic matter. Some of my fruit near 7 lbs under those conditions. If you can cover during any freeze, you can put them in the ground. The good thing about a pot, is you can keep them near your house where more warmth will allow them to grow more during this winter. A top is usually 2 1/2 years to fruit. I grow around 18 varieties.

garyfla: You're doing something wrong perhaps. The feedback I get is usually they are the best pineapples the person ever had, and these are smooth cayennes, which usually aren't as good as MD-2 (the usual Dole kind from the grocery store). They are usually very sweet and juicy.

Gary

I also have successfully started a number of pineapple plants from tops - no fruit yet, but as already stated, it does take awhile.

I also read (somewhere) to pull off an inch or of the lower leaves before planting - & when I did, I uncovered many little root stubs already starting. These were the supersweet 'gold' kind

I find using tops of Dole pineapples to be the easiest to grow and fruit from.

John, was there any difference in flavor that you could attribute to the amount of sun?

Gary (dghays),
I'm surprised to hear there are 18 varieties of pineapple! I like the Dole brand from Hawaii, a little better than the Del Monte ones from Costa Rica. Are they different varieties? I've been through the Del Monte plantation in C.R., that whole valley smells like pineapple. :>) The ones we ate there sure were better than the ones from Publix.

What size pots would you reccomend? I have one now in a 3 gal that I had to move from where it was planted. How do you fertilize them? I have heard of dropping a piece of apple into the the vase to induce fruiting. Ever try that?

thanks john

cjc45
My backyard neighbor who has his in shade gives me a taste now and then. I can't taste any difference and they are as large as normal. They do get more sun in the winter than in the summer.

john

dghays
I'm always rather surprised that they grow at all in my sand seashell mix let alone be productive.
On a trip to Costa Rica I bought a 10 pond pineapple for 50 cents that had bright pink flesh so delicious we ate the core and fought over the sprout lol.
Ruined me for life on "delicious" Have never been able to find the pink type in the US. Unfortuneately the vendor couldn't speak english and my spanish sucks. Couldn't find the variety name .The red ones I've found are very small and rather bitter iMO gary

There's probably over 100 pineapple varieties, many are subvars of smooth cayennes. I don't pull bottom leaves off and they do fine too. There is a long story about the MD-2 pineapple if you want to google it.

garyfla, I'd love to find out about that pineapple, but usually in another country, they end up using a different word that often doesn't help us here. I have a Spanish Red, but it is fairly average tasting. Yours must be different, would love to get one somehow!

Gary

I took Gary's advice and googled MD-2 pineapple. So here's a link that had the most advice about growing. It doesn't really give a fertilizer recommendation, but it sounds like a good palm fertilizer would work well. Anyone?
john

Here is a link that might be useful: pineapple

dghays
So would I!! Never heard of a pink pineapple. Got it from a street vendor who also had the yellow and a white variety. There are other Bromeliads that produce fruit but are not grown extensively. But the vendor did call it Pina?? end of my spanish lol Sure looked like a pineapple except for the color and the size.
Oh well the yellows are very easy to grow but there's an asian market that sells them for under two bucks far superior than any I grew.
I now only have 3 plants mainly to see what will kill them.lol. One is growing in a recycle bin for almost two years with no soil at all. No fruit though.
My garden is so small I grow mainly ornamental plants .
I do grow water chestnuts,millet ,water hawthorn stevia and carombola...Everything else is just for looks lol gary

Pina is spanish for pineapple.
A slow release fert for acid plants would be good. If they get lots of organic matter they don't need much at all.
The interesting thing about the MD-2 pineapple is the story of it's breeding, and the three companies parting company, etc.

bill (castorp) had a half dozen pineapples growing in medium (3 gallon) terracotta pots, filled to the brim with nothing more than pinebark nuggets. they were all in bloom last time i saw them. striking--he had them in a line. very mediterranean-looking.

My blueberry bed is all organic material topped with pinebark and peat moss, and that is where the pineapples are growing huge. I have one pineapple almost ripe right now. Many plants love that situation, my miracle fruit which is allegedly slow growing, is growing pretty fast in that, along with cinnamon. I'll have to try Bill's method myself. I have one variegated pineapple which hasn't done well in a pot, perhaps I'll repot it like Bills.

Gary

I just twist off the top and place the lower part into standing water. You really do not need to do anything else. although I am sure everything else works fine. change the water every couple days and after a couple weeks I pull the lower leaves off and often notice root growth already. plant it and wait a couple years.