Pineapple ( Ananas comosus )
Pineapples can easily grow outside here in Houston. After you’ve cut up a pineapple for serving, trim the remaining fruit away from the bottom of the leaves. Leave it sit on your counter a couple of days to dry. Otherwise the bit of fruit left on the bottom will mold.
Then just stick it in the ground and wait. This one was planted about a month ago.
I’ve some locals tell me they get a fruit after a year, some have waited five years and still not gotten a fruit. So there is a bit of luck involved. Your pineapple should bloom and bear fruit its second or third year. If not you can help it along by covering the plant with a large clear plastic bag and placing an apple under the bag with the pineapple. Do this once the cool weather breaks in Feb. or Mar.
Once the plant fruits, it dies, new plants come from offshoots.
Plant it in the sunniest, warmest area of your garden. Pineapples are bromeliads so do not rely on the soil for nutrition. Don’t worry about planting them in bad dirt.
It will rot if the soil it is planted in is too damp, build a small mount to plant it on if necessary to keep it from sitting in water.
Something keeps stealing my pineapples. As quick as I plant them they are absconded with in the dark of night. I’ve taken to placing 4 short stakes about the plants and criss-crossing over the top with string to keep them in place until they get established.
See also:
Pineapple growing in Florida
Growing a pineapple is novel and may produce fruit
Well first the yard guys tore it up. Then some critter kept digging it up. I have it staked and string running across the top and between the stakes now.
I don’t know if it has been dug up too many times to make it or not? I’ll put a few more in come spring either way.
I have two of these growing out back in mostly sun, moderately moist soil.
Neither has done a whole lot. Funny thing is I grew them as houseplants in New England and they did much better than they have out here in the sun.
Maybe it just takes them time to get going.