Back in May, I shared my pineapple growing experiment with you, and since "growing pineapple" is a popular search phrase for people finding my blog, I figured that means it's a hot topic and some of you might want an update. Yes, that beautiful plant in the picture is my baby pineapple, but it's not such a baby anymore. It looked downright scary back in May, didn't it? I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of you thought that it wasn't going to make it. I certainly had my doubts. You see those little brown-tipped leaves at the bottom? That's what is left of the original pineapple top. All these long, green, beautiful leaves are new.What have I been doing? I water it at least every other day. I give it a cup of coffee every month, and when I rinse milk bottles, I pour the first rinse into the plant for a touch of extra calcium a couple times a week. I have no idea whether these things actually help, or if the pineapple is surviving in spite of my foolishness. I recently watered it with some vermicompost tea and will be doing that weekly now that my worms are finally producing plenty of manure.
Now I just have to remember to bring it inside before the first frost, which usually doesn't happen until mid-October. However, tonight's low is predicted to be upper 40s, and tomorrow night's low is predicted to be lower 40s, so I think I'll be bringing it inside to be safe. I don't remember my last pineapple plant looking this terrific before I lost it to frost. If I lose this baby, you'll hear my sobs all the way to Minnesota and Ohio, at least.
4 comments:
Good lookin' plant!
Hmmm... I wonder how they do if kept indoors all the time?
Dole-baby is looking happy. Thanks for sharing about the milk. I have been putting crushed egg shells around my tomato plants & will give this a try too. My mother-in-law said she had a favorite rose bush that was always beautiful. It was outside the backdoor and they would pour their dishwater around it each day.
Very nice! I had an indoor pineapple plant for a couple years. The leaves got super long and pokey and I didn't really have a good place for a killer poke plant, so I let it go.
Being tropical plants, they definitely need a lot of sun. This one will live in my dining room, right on the other side of the door where it's pictured here. However, we only get about nine hours of sunlight in the middle of winter, so that might take its toll. Hawaii has almost 12 hours of daylight year-round. I don't know if artificial light will help or not. There's a lot I don't know, but it'll be fun to learn.
I got the milk idea from my eighth grade science fair. A girl did her experiment on bean plants; gave some only water, some got orange juice, and some got a percentage of milk. The ones getting milk grew the best.
Thanks for the heads up about the pokey leaves, Jacquelyn. I will have to think about where this one will live during the winter once it gets bigger. I'm hoping to have a greenhouse in the next year or two for just such things.
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