Week 4 - A Peek at Pineapples

This little post is to show one of the slowest growing foods here at Lofty Meadows - The Pineapple. For such an exotic fruit, they are very easy to grow, if you are patient. From planting to fruit takes no less than two years. A long time yes, but like a good friendship, they are very low maintenance.

After cutting, we keep the tops of any Pineapples that we buy from the shop. Sometimes, if we are driving out to the throbbing metropolis that is Dayboro we pass a pineapple farm which has an honesty box out the front next to a big crate of Pineapples. Most of the day-trippers wouldn't want to soil the boot of the Mercedes or Audi with pineapple fronds and so there is often a large pile of tops there for the taking.

A juvenile Pineapple

I feel that many gardeners like to propagate the view that there is a certain art or perhaps science to growing plants, and pineapples are no exception. Some people say that you should cut off a certain amount of the pineapple with the top and then let it dry for a certain number of days before planting in a certain type of soil. Perhaps we're lucky, but we just stick em in the ground as is, where ever there is space. Behold, the field of Golden pineapples!

Well, almost golden

"Hmmm..." I hear you mathematical types wondering out there.

"Yes, you have a query?" I ask, you obviously have something on your mind.

"Dave, if you get one pineapple from one top, and then another pineapple from that one's top, then it stands to reason that there is a finite number of pineapples in the world.

"Well that is a reasonable assumption I suppose but....."

"When the Big G first turned on the lights, separated water from earth, and came up with the Pineapple, she only made so many, to replicate one for one. A simple cloning really...." you go on, becoming more animated.

"Yes it is cloning I suppose, they don't set flower. They're a bromeliad you know but I still think tha...."

"......there is set number of Pineapples like so many imaginary towers metaphorically balanced one on top of the other, sprouting upwards in ever tottering poles." you go on indulging in increasingly extravagant poetic imagery

"Er..."

"But wait!"

And I do wait, agape. A sudden wave of what can only be described as blind terror has overcome you. Your logic is relentlessly unravelling your very being.

"If there are a set number of Pineapples in the world and not everyone is setting such a sterling example at pineapple breeding as yourself, then the Pineapples are rapidly approaching extinction! Total annihilation! Maybe that's what 2012 is about!"As you splutter and turn blue I begin resuscitation.

The final product

But, dear reader, please fear not. The tops actually get shoots coming out of the sides too. Side shoots, I call them, although I think the pineapple masters have a fancy name for them. It turns out that these side shoots, when separated from the mother plant and planted actually fruit in just eighteen months.

Sorry about stretching an otherwise innocuous subject into a B grade melodrama. It is a weakness of mine I confess.

Thanks for reading and have a go at growing pineapples. It's easy.

Till then show some rib and do all those social media things that people do. I'd love to hit 10,000 page-views. That would be an inflated ego. (click on label at the right hand side for a previous post)

Showing Rib