Pineapple Almost Ready to Harvest

I have 4 plants in my garden.  Last year one produced a small pineapple and now has little plants growing around where the old plant was.  It died back after the pineapple was picked.  New plants came out of the base.  This year I have 2 plants that have produced fruit. Both of these are twice the size of the one from last year.  It was the first year I had one. These two are just a little smaller then what you find in the stores.

This is the second one.

I am going to let then stay on the plant a few more days and keep an eye on them.  We are getting lots of rain and it is raining now.  It is suppose to rain tomorrow like to day.  This will help the fruit get a little larger as they start to ripen.

I have 2 more pineapple plants to put in the ground that I started from tops last summer.  They are easy to start from the tops of a pineapple that you buy at the grocery.  I live in South Florida so they grow well here out side. All I do is grab a hold of the top of the pineapple and twist it from the fruit.  The top will now have a pointed end that came out of the fruit. I peal a few layers of leaves off the bottom.  Then I place that in a jar of water up to the bottom of the first row of leaves.

It will start to root in a couple of weeks.  Once I have some roots I plant the top in a pot of rich potting soil.  I keep it on my porch and let it produce a nice plant.

These two are ready to plant. They may produce fruit next year.  It takes two years to produce fruit from a top.  It takes 5 years to produce pineapple from seed.  Most of the fruit we find at the market don’t have many seeds because they have been hybridized not to be so seedy. They used to be loaded with little black seeds just inside the skin. I only see a few seeds now inside the fruit.

I should have enough to make a batch of pineapple jam.  I make some every year.  It is so much cheaper to make it yourself. It also taste better. You can find my recipe for this jam here.