Not sure why it won't let me upload pictures but will try again later. This is the tomato plant, it is just one plant, we have moved it so that it stays inside the fence so the birds don't get them.

Hi Sunnygrl

Congratulations on your pineapple bounty, it looks to me that you are successful with them because you are taking the time to do some care. I also have some pineapple plants scatter all over the yard but I have to admit that after planting them, I pretty much forget about them, I do get some fruit that is very sweet, a treat for sure. Looking forward to see your pictures...

Silvia

Glad to see you are having success with the pineapples. This made me laugh, last year just as I was going to pick my first home grown pineapple a raccoon ate it. Left me nothing but a green top. I have a couple of fruits growing so we'll see who gets them first!

See if you can save some seed from that tomato plant. Sounds like a survivor for your area.

Craig

I waited 2 years and was rewarded with a huge pineapple. I wasn't sure when to pick it. Asked neighbors and friends, all said its not ready yet. Well next day, it was ready for something which ate the whole thing. Never got to eat it! I'm so discouraged to try again. Two years and some critter ate it!

How the heck do you know when to pick them?

Sunnygrl44, I bet yours was organic. No chemicals to inhibit growth. Next one I try I'll buy at Whole Foods.

Jane

Jane, that is sad that something got to it before you picked it. You can tell when to pick it, when it turns yellow, and you can smell the pineapple when you walk by it.

One day mine was turning yellow but couldn't smell the pineapple unless I stuck my nose next to it. The next day i just walked by it and you could smell it really well, so we picked it. I was trying to upload pictures of it the other day but couldn't get them to load on here for some reason. I'll try again. And yes all organic, no chemicals at all. The first picture is the pineapple we picked last July.

The plants in back all have a pineapple growing, and the ones in front aren't even a year yet and they are growing pineapples, the blue pot has the top from the one we picked last July and the other day we noticed the big purple pot in back which is the mother now has 2 growing.

I do the same Sunnygrl does, I smell and touch for ripeness. Pineapples usually take a long time to fruit, that is the reason I just forget about them in the garden. When I buy them if they don't have a sweet smell, I just don't get them.

Sunnygrl, nice pictures of your pineapple bounty! and I can see the tomato picture today.

Silvia

I've heard the best way to find out when a pineapple is ripe is to watch it and wait for a squirrel to steal it. Then remember what it looked like before the squirrel stole it for the next one. Squirrels are awesome for figuring out ripeness. Of course, it's not so awesome that you don't get to even taste it, but there you go. I'm thinking when mine starts to flower/fruit I will cage it off similarly to how I'm doing with my blueberries. Oddly enough though, I'm more interested in harvesting the pups to spread the plants around than I am in the fruit itself.

I've got two beds of pineapples, and the plants grow very differently. One almost gets full sun all the time, and has very dry sandy soil. Plants are always very pale green, bordering on yellow. More water makes the problem worse, and results in root rot.

Second bed gets less direct light, and plants are dark green, grow faster than the other bed, and much healthier overall. The soil was amended by me when we built it, before I knew much about pineapples, and is much heavier than the native sand in the other bed.

This seems counter to everything I've read about pineapples. Anyone have any idea what is wrong with the first bed?

Oldmangroot,

In my limited experience, I believe that organic matter helps. Like you, I first started mine in sandy soil, though potted. After a while, they took on a yellowish color and no amount of watering, lack of watering, fertilizing or magnesium seemed to help. I finally moved them to a permanent spot in a bed that doesn't get sun until about 11 AM and then gets baked the rest of the day. While the soil was still sandy (my entire yard is a sandhill), the bed had been mulched with different shredded woods over the year prior, so the top two inches were heavy in organic matter. Shortly after putting them in this bed, both plants started putting on lots of good, green growth. I lost one last year to rot, but the other, which was just 2 ft away has been thriving on neglect and mulch. It is either benefiting from the organic matter or the temperature modulation of the mulch or, likely, both. I now have another top in the same bed and it has rooted and is putting good growth.

in answer to your question, I have read that nitrogen helps with the pale coloring, they use a lot of nitrogen as most plants that bear fruit. I have added blood meal to the soil every so often and it helps. I also think that some varieties of pineapple have slightly pale leaves, But if they start curling then it's a lack of nitrogen and water. In the hot summer months I have put up a garden cloth that lets the sun and rain in, but shades the plants as well. The soil I used was garden soil and some cow manure that I gathered from a spot where we could get as much as we wanted, and mix it together with some blood meal. I didn't do anything over the winter with them, just let them hibernate if you will. I also feed them plant food that I use on all my plants once a month or so. I also add new soil every 6 months or so to rejuvenate the old soil. My plants get full sun from sunrise to sunset. As the pictures show, I'm not an expert, but this is my experience with the pineapples here in Florida. Hope this helps. Also, depending on where you live, the sandy soil here is full of salt, so I used the garden soil. To me sand has no nutritional value for plants, unless they are cactus, and in Florida the sand is salty in some areas. We had sand in one spot where we were planting squash, and I dug it up, and used the cow manure and garden soil about a foot and a half deep, the squash did great until the bugs got them. And I gave up.

Your plants & fruit look great! I understand that here in Pinellas county, pineapples were a commercial crop, once upon a time. Thanks for sharing your cultivation techniques - I have 2 blooming plants in a pot now & would like to optimize the fruit, if possible. Will def. try your ways.

Here're a couple of pages on pineapple growing FYI...

http://www.floridata.com/ref/A/anan_com.cfm

http://www.crfg.org/pubs/ff/pineapple.html

Our free tomato plant got 15 feet! Thanks birds. The next year we had multiple plants and it was just from some tomatoes falling off. They are called key west tomatoes.