Congratulations! Lucky you. How's the tastes!! I've been obsessed with fruiting a pineapple recently and have about 30 tops potted up, lol. I haven't done the apple skin thing to induce bloom yet. But I can't wait to taste my own home grown pineapple. I believe it would require gassing again for the other ratoon to fruit. Have you started separating some of them from the mother plant?

I greatly enjoyed eating that fresh pineapple Monday evening. I've eaten a lot of fresh pineapples but Maui Gold's have the sweetest, best taste and you can eat all you want of them without your mouth getting sore from too much bromelain or acid.

Commercial fruits are gassed with ethylene, carbide and/or hormones dissolved in water and sprayed into the plants crown. Same principal as the dead ripe apple cutting, just easier and cheaper for commercial growers. From what I've read, it will take at least 12-18 months under ideal conditions for the young top grown plants to be large enough to induce flowering. One source said not to induce until the plants have forty mature leaves. If you do it too early, the fruit will be much smaller than normal and flop over before the fruit is mature. It takes about two months after inducing for the new fruit to become apparent and about six month after that for the fruit to mature.

I hope you've got plenty of room! Thirty mature pineapple plants would take up quite a bit of room. Mine are almost four feet across and field-grown plants are a lot bigger!

Here is a link that might be useful: Australian Pineapples-Golden Circle

Maui4me,
Can you post a picture of your pineapple? How big a pot is it in? How do you overwinter? Do you cut way back on water in winter? Thanks! ~Dave

Whoa 4ft across. Some of my largest ones are only two feet across for now.
Once those other get larger I know I won't have the room for them!! lol. Its gonna be kinda of pointy and rough around the legs.

Dave in NoVA: I did take pictures starting when I found that the flower crown was forming and a couple of times as it developed. They were shot at better than 3Mb resolution, some at 5Mb, so I'll have to resize them to greatly decrease the file sizes. I'll try to do that so and will post when they'll available for you to see.

They are growing in 2 gal. black plastic pots, although terra cotta would be a lot better as you can keep up more accurately with the soil moisture level and keep cooler roots in our fierce summer heat.

I do cut back on the water in the winter, not that they get a lot of water in the summer. They seem to do best when allowed to go fairly dry between waterings.

"They seem to do best when allowed to go fairly dry between waterings."

That's been my experience too. I've lost pineapple plants when it's been cool and wet for too long.

A number of year ago, I found Florel which is far superior to apple pieces for generating a pineapple fruit.. I have several dozen pineapples, I spray some in Nov, some in Dec and I start harvesting in May which continues through Oct. A few even last into winter. I fertilize in early March and again in early Oct with a time release fertilizer and spray a few time with seaweed extract. I live in zone 9b in Fl.

What's the name of the time release fertilizer? Mine flowered last February and put out a pup from between its leaf axils, after harvesting the pineapple that July I left the pup alone on the mother plant's roots and it flowered this February! Exactly one year after the mother plant first flowered. That one had put out four or five other pups at the base of the fruit on the fruiting stalk also.