How to grow pineapple at home

Pineapples have long been flaunting on the shelves of grocery stores, but despite universal fame, they are considered one of the most bizarre and strange exotic fruits. Today we completely destroy this halo of mystery around the pineapples and prove that they can be easily grown even on our windowsill. Naturally, you will not be able to get such large fruits, but the modest crop of your pineapples with proper care is secured. So, is it possible to grow pineapple in a city apartment or a private house?

Methods of growing pineapple

A little patience, a little botanical knowledge, correct fertilizers, and after a few years you can boast of your own pineapple plantation on the windowsill. It sounds great, but at the same time it is worthwhile to understand that even with perfect care, plants will not be able to achieve their full size in the artificial environment, that is, in the room, even if spacious.

To begin with, let's figure out what pineapple is and how it exists in nature. The most interesting pineapples are how they eat is accumulate rain water and dew with hard leaves that direct life -giving moisture directly to the center of the ripening fruit or to the barrel. This method allows pineapples to survive in arid periods, but the plant retained the traditional type of power - through the roots. This moment should be taken into account when watering the plant, so as not to violate the natural system of enrichment of moisture.

Pineapple can multiply with a seed method or upper parts of the fruits - green "tails" with which they are sold in stores. Below we will consider both of these methods.

Raising pineapple from the top

Absolutely anyone can grow pineapple from the top - it’s so easy to do. To care for the plant subsequently and achieve its fruiting - this is the main difficulty, and to germinate the top will not be difficult.

So, first you need to go to the market and buy a ripe, healthy and beautiful pineapple with green leaves and a yellowish fruit.  If at the base of the leaves you find brownish spots, such pineapple is better not to use for planting. To play it safe, choose two in your opinion the most ripe pineapple.

Now you need to separate the top (green part) from the fetus. It is strictly impossible to cut it with a knife! Squeeze the fruit tightly in one hand, the other grab the leaves and carefully, but confidently cram it, as if unscrewing the bottle lid. As a result, the top should be separated with a small stump, and in the pineapple itself there will be a recess. Below you will find a video how to grow pineapple and separate the top from the fetus.

There is a second way - to cut off the leaf part with a knife, capturing a little the upper part of the fetus with the pulp. After that, the pulp should immediately be removed, otherwise it will rot. Your task in both cases is to expose the base of the barrel from which the roots will break through.

Useful advice: in order to completely eliminate the decay of planting material, it should be left in the fresh air for 2-3 days for drying. However, as practice shows, you can often do without this preparation.

It remains only to place the separated top in clean water at room temperature and wait for the appearance of roots. The lower part of the stump should not touch the bottom of the container with water, otherwise it will begin to rot. Put pineapple in a sunny place and change water every 3-4 days. It is best if it is purified water, and ideally, distilled.

Useful advice: to “wake up” pineapple, you can drip a little freshly squeezed aloe juice into the water.

After a couple of weeks, pineapple will give roots and begin to actively develop. When the length of the roots exceeds 2 cm, you can plant the plant in a pot.

Growing pineapple from seeds

You can grow pineapple at home with a seed method, another thing is that good seeds are more difficult to get than good pineapple, so the above instructions are more popular. Pineapple has small oblong seeds 1.5*4 mm yellow-brown, slightly curved in the form of a sickle.

They are extracted from overripe fruits, after which they are washed in a weak solution of potassium permanganate and dried in the shade. A sowing substrate can be leaf soil, coniferous mixture or a combination of universal soil with river sand 1: 1. Seeds should be deepened by 1-2 cm, slightly sprinkled with earth, poured with clean filtered water at room temperature, cover the pot with cling film to create the greenhouse effect, and wait for the first shoots.

Useful advice: do not be afraid that the seeds will not be enough moisture. Inside the pot, covered with a film, there is a real cycle of water in nature - it evaporates, condensation accumulates on the back of the film, drips on the soil and so on.

Pots with seeds should be put in a warm room where the temperature does not drop below 20C. The hotter, the faster the seeds will “wake up” and give out seedlings. For example, in a room with a temperature of 24C, they will turn into 40-45 days, at 25-27C-after 3-4 weeks, at 30-35C-after two to three weeks. Do not forget that this is a tropical plant, and therefore we must try to create the most comfortable conditions for it. Not all the seeds will germinate at once, and this is completely normal. Some of them may be late for 3-6 months.

When the sprouts reach the back of the film, it must be removed. It is quite simple to take care of seedlings during this period - you only need to control the moderate humidity of the soil and spray them from time to time. A couple of times a month you need to apply fertilizers - mineral solutions or chicken droppings with water (15g/l). On sultry sunny days, young pineapples are best protected from direct rays.

When the seedlings grow by 6-8 cm, they follow them to transplant into loose soil. To prepare a fertile soil mixture, it is necessary to take sheet, sod soil, humus, peat add river sand and slightly charcoal (5% of the total volume).

As you know, plants develop more slowly than when growing from a stump, and therefore fruiting occurs several years later.

Planting pineapple in the ground

Earth for growing pineapple should be loose, wet and saturated with nutritional components. For rooting, not a clean substrate is best suited, but a mixture of universal soil, river sand and peat. At first, you will need a very tiny pot with a diameter of a little more than the stump itself. Pour into the bottom of expanded clay or vermiculite to provide drainage. Despite the fact that pineapples love moist soil, they quickly die with stagnation of water. Place the pot in the south side, but cover it from the direct rays of the sun.

It will take about 6-8 weeks for rooting, and when new leaves begin to curse, then everything went successfully-Pineapple took root and launched real roots. If the plant does not show any signs of life for 2 months, most likely it died. Over time, the old leaves will dry and die, and fresh leaves will come in their place. To accelerate the development, as the old foliage dries, carefully cut it. Watering should be carried out no more than 1 time in 5-7 days.

When about a year passes at this pace, pineapple should be transplanted into more spacious “apartments”. You will also need to add a soil mixture, and it is better to choose soil specifically for succulents. Do not forget about good drainage.

Useful advice: if in winter, pineapple has slowed the development or completely stopped changing, then he “fell asleep”, as well as conceived by nature for all plants. But if in the spring he does not show activity, he may have exhausted the soil mixture and needs additional nutrition. Plant the plant by adding new soil.

Pineapple care

As we have already said, it is not so difficult to grow pineapple, but to create optimal conditions for him to try to try. The first thing to learn is that the cold will kill this heat -loving tropical plant, and the colder it will be in the apartment, the slower it will develop. In the summer, it can be safely taken out onto the balcony, but with the first cool notes in the air it is better to rearrange the pot into the house. If you have a garden, feel free to put pineapple in the most sunny place - being in the fresh air and in a spacious atmosphere strongly stimulates growth.

Pineapple needs to be at least 6 hours a day in a lit place, whatever the weather outside the window. In winter, it is very tight with sunlight, so we recommend that you take care of artificial lighting in advance. Buy daylight lamps (cold and warm spectrum) so that on cloudy days the plant does not suffer from a feed deficiency. This will benefit not only pineapple, but also other indoor plants, so for the winter you can arrange a kind of flower garden with an artificial “sun” in one of the corners of the room.

Despite thermal loving, pineapple must be kept away from heating devices, otherwise it will dry out. Drafts are also able to harm the plant. It should be watered once a week, and not only pouring water to the Earth, but also spray the leaves so that the water drains them to the center (pillar) and additionally nourishes pineapple.

Useful advice: if you overdo it with watering, and the water will stand up, a characteristic smell of decay will appear, and the plant will begin to “get sick”. In this case, you should not wait until the excess water evaporates, and immediately replace the soil, otherwise pineapple may die.

Diseases and pests

If the plant lives in the apartment, this does not mean that it is insured against diseases and pests, although the effect is minimal. This fate and indoor pineapple did not go around. As for pests, the main problems are delivered by all kinds of ticks and powdery worm. It is quite simple to bring them out - you only need to rinse the plant with a weak soap solution, and then wipe with a sponge moistened in clean water. You cannot leave the soap film on the leaves - they will not be able to eat. You can also use insecticides, but it should be remembered that these are highly toxic toxic substances that, of course, will kill all pests, but will also cause certain harm to the plant itself and even affect its fruits.

Another danger that can in wait for indoor pineapples is the rot of the core. It is provoked by a fungus, and as a result, its activities in the plant leaves blacken and disappear. If the plant was struck by the fungus, only fungicide can save it - it must be poured into the core. But even in this case there is no 100% guarantee of cure. If fungicide helps, then pineapple will have new shoots, and the old trunk will need to be cut.

Pineapple fruiting

If pineapple grows in a natural environment, it needs about 26 months to begin to bear fruit. In the case of domestic pineapples, it is very difficult to predict the development of events - everything is purely individual and depends on the growing conditions. Usually after 15-17 months, when the plant reaches a height of 25-30 cm, the first inflorescences appear. A large bud appears at the very top, the stalk grows, moving the bud up, and after 1.5-2 months flowering begins. It lasts about 2 weeks, and this spectacle serves as a real reward for all the care of the plant-beautiful bright blue or purple flowers bloom one after another, forming the rows.

Each flower lives only day, and when the latter blooms, the fetus begins to develop. The formation of a full -fledged pineapple can occupy from 3 to 6 months. Depending on the variety of plants and growing conditions. However, most often homemade pineapples refuse to bear fruit - this is the main complexity. Sometimes they do not even bloom or bloom, but so weak that the fetal tie does not occur at all.

This problem is solved with special procedures - stimulation of fruiting. For indoor plants, stimulation should be carried out only if the length of the leaves of pineapple is 60-70 cm, and the thickness of the trunk is 6-10 cm. This means that the plant has been completely formed.

Important: you can stimulate the fruiting of pineapples only in the warm season, when there is enough light and heat for the development of a bud and fetus.

Recipes for stimulating fruiting of home pineapples:

1. Lower 10-15 g of a piece of carbide into a liter jar of water, wait for the end of the reaction (the water will boil due to the release of acetylene gas) and measure 2039 ml of the remaining solution with the sediment. Pour it into the funnel of the leaves, in the center of which is the growth point. Repeat the procedure the next day (a new solution can not be prepared, but use the existing one).
2. Cover the pineapple with plastic film or a large bag, put a half -liter jar of water in an impromptu greenhouse and lower the 5 g of carbide there. Acetylene will begin to release, and the package should not pass the gas. Carry out such an operation with a “gas chamber” for three consecutive days, after which expect the development of the bud.

It is worth noting that fumigation of the plant with acetylene smoke is less effective than pouring a carbide solution to a growth point. If you have taken advantage of the first recipe, flowering should begin after 4-6 weeks. If pineapple does not want to delight you with blue flowers, then one of the two: either he is sick, or is not yet ready to bloom, and we must wait until next year.

And now the sad, on the one hand, news - after fruiting, pineapple dies. However, only the central, the most developed part of the plant, which the fetus crowned, dies. Before that, side shoots appear, and they can be used to breed the next generations of pineapple, as well as a stump from an eaten fetus.

How to grow pineapple: photo