HAVING hip surgery certainly slows one down so I’m glad that a few years ago I decided to plant pineapples, that delicious fruit available all year round in our shops.
In the third “lazy gardener “column way back in May of ‘21, I suggested that for the truly lazy gardener, the pineapple is a real ‘set and forget’ type plant. For a start it brings home to the gardener the way time flies in our lives, how we think that we have an abundant amount of time available to do all the things that we want to do.
When you look back the old saying ‘that time flies’ really hits home.
Growing pineapples brings back the reality in our lives, it just seems like last year that I first planted my four pineapples in 2016, obtained for free from the local juice shop.
I now have over 80 plants growing at various stages in the garden.
Every 30 weeks or so I revise some of the intricacies of their growing cycle that I’ve found works for me.
Here are just some of my findings:
Planting a pineapple can be done one of two ways, either the head is screwed off and planted or turned on its side and the pineapple itself cut about 2cm from the head so that it forms a flat surface for planting.
Small “slips” or “pups” are often seen protruding from the mature plant, these can be screwed off anytime and planted, however they should be large enough not to damage the new plant.
Not in itself a clear sign that it would happen all the time, but an old plant that was going to be thrown away after fruiting was kept and potted in the hope that it would grow again, twelve months on, low and behold, a new pup is showing.
So, it gives hope that an old plant will still give up a pup even a year on.
I used the analogy of a term deposit in my first expose.
One plants a pineapple, waits around three years, plants the one top and perhaps a few pups as well as the original stem and all of a sudden within three years one could have five pineapples growing, ready for the next harvest.
Those five could then easily become 25 in time, showing the value of compounding your original investment.
If you have young children why not one for each birthday, they could have quite a harvest in time.
If you move house, dig them up and take them with you or better still put them in large pots and move them anytime.
Another thing is that even when a large plant, they can be moved successfully to another part of the garden without loss.
An article in the Courier Mail in January mentioned that because of the unusually wet weather, there would be a glut of smaller pineapples coming onto the market soon and they asked all Queenslanders to buy pineapples to help the growers at this time.
If you did, I trust you planted the tops.
Till next time.
