Pineapple and Tropical Plants

[PeakOiler]

frankthetank inspired me to grow pineapple after he showed us a picture of one of his plants in the Gardening-General thread about a couple years ago. So you can credit him for this thread.

JJ jumped in and showed us some pineapple plants he grew with the help of a local school.

I showed some pictures of the plants I started from crowns of fruit I bought at the local grocery store in the Gardening-General thread and I'll post links to those pages later.

Meanwhile, shown below are the six pineapple plants, five of which were started from crowns about a year ago:



The plants were torn up somewhat by severe winds on June 11, but they're healing. They get full morning sun for only about 4 hrs now that I've moved them under the eave of the front porch. The newest pineapple is in the clay pot, planted earlier this year, iirc.

The leaftip-to-leaftip diameter of the largest plant is approaching 4 ft with a height of nearly two ft.

[PeakOiler]

Here is the link to the Gardening-General thread that features frankthetank's pictures of his pineapple plants:
http://peakoil.com/planning/production-gardening-general-t17387-360.html

The link to JJ's pineapple pics: http://peakoil.com/planning/production-gardening-general-t17387-420.html

The link to the pictures of my pineapples shown above about a year ago:

http://peakoil.com/planning/production-gardening-general-t17387-450.html

Edited to add links.

[alokin]

pineapples do not require lots of water or attention, but I think the relation to the space they occupy to the amount of fruit you get in a set time is not that good. However you can plant them close together.
Actually, if you do not live in the right climate and your survival depends upon what you plant, then you will not plant any exotic stuff.

[PeakOiler]

pineapples do not require lots of water or attention, but I think the relation to the space they occupy to the amount of fruit you get in a set time is not that good. However you can plant them close together.
Actually, if you do not live in the right climate and your survival depends upon what you plant, then you will not plant any exotic stuff.

All very true, alokin.

Fortunately my survival does not depend on what I grow. (Thank goodness). But I bought the pineapples at the store anyway, enjoyed the fruit, and instead of tossing out the crowns, I planted them. So I got a plant and a fruit for $3.99 (ea.)

Hopefully they will produce fruit someday, unlike something that doesn't even produce any food. (i.e. ornamentals).

[smallpoxgirl]

What's your plan for keeping the humming birds away?

[PeakOiler]

What's your plan for keeping the humming birds away?

Good question. I didn't know hummingbirds would decrease the quality of the fruit if they pollinated pineapple. I guess when the plants put out the fruiting stalk I'll use bird netting. The plants will be moved indoors when the lows get below 60F.

Thanks for the heads up smallpoxgirl! I'll keep ya posted!

[smallpoxgirl]

Thanks for the heads up smallpoxgirl!

No prob. I just figured that out last fall. I was canning a bunch of pineapple and I got to wondering what sort of a plant part they are. They seem like fruit, but no seeds. Apparently that's the answer is they're a sterile fruit and if you let them pollinate it messes them up. The importation of hummingbirds into Hawaii is strictly forbidden for that reason.

[JJ]

What's your plan for keeping the humming birds away?

Good question. I didn't know hummingbirds would decrease the quality of the fruit if they pollinated pineapple. I guess when the plants put out the fruiting stalk I'll use bird netting. The plants will be moved indoors when the lows get below 60F.

Thanks for the heads up smallpoxgirl! I'll keep ya posted!

last winter I tried to save six papayas by building a small greenhouse over them, unfortunately I incinerated them by putting a brooding light in the greenhouse (when I went to work it was 25 degrees. when I came home it was 150. oooppps)


we'll try the papaya thing again, but this time no brooder light. lemon grass behind.


didn't know about the hummingbird thing. wow. (black market post peak hummingbird tongues, anyone?)

[rocky_11]

I wish I had the climate to grow Pineapples! Colorado winters are just too harsh...

[frankthetank]

I'm down to one pineapple after getting rid of the three bigger ones that were injured either by spring cold or too much sunlight.

I have around 15 banana plants, these being the biggest (Musa Basjoo)...


Pineapples do have seeds and you can get them to sprout. It takes a while (like a month) to get them going. I've noticed some pineapples tend to have more seeds then others. They are tiny brown seeds.

I tried papayas once. I actually got it to flower! But then it kind of went downhill and i composted it.

[jdmartin]

I'm down to one pineapple after getting rid of the three bigger ones that were injured either by spring cold or too much sunlight.

Pineapples do have seeds and you can get them to sprout. It takes a while (like a month) to get them going. I've noticed some pineapples tend to have more seeds then others. They are tiny brown seeds.

I tried papayas once. I actually got it to flower! But then it kind of went downhill and i composted it.

Holy crap Frank! How do you grow those in the great tundra? what kind of soil? How long till you get bananas? Tell all, man, tell all!

Also, how do I go about growing the pineapple and how long till I get a pineapple? What kind of sunlight?

[alokin]

Pineapples have seeds? Where? Usually they are planted from crowns or slips.
For the papaya you have to mulch them heavily. And then there are (mostly) male and female plants. And mine tend always to be male.
If you live in the right climate did you try this:
starfruit: bears in one year and is a heavy bearer,
tree tomato: bears in less than a year heavily, but acquired taste,
acerola cherry: bears in one year, nice and tidy, great for the kids,
and passionfruit grown from seeds.
The starfruit and the acerola cherry in my garden are both grafted trees.

[frankthetank]

This particular banana (Musa Basjoo) will flower/fruit but i believe the fruit tastes not so good. The best bet for fruit would be to go with a dwarfing banana like an Orinoco or a Super Dwarf Cavendish and keep it in a large pot and move it in an out with the seasons. If you could get it to flower in early May? you could probably have some fruit by fall (it probably wouldn't ripen (you could let them turn after cutting, but you would have still grown bananas!). A guy from Chicago on another board got fruit off a monster banana plant so i know its very possible.

The easiest way to start pineapples is to twist of the tops off a fruit and peel away a few of the bottom layers of brown/green leaves and put it in a small pot and keep the soil moist and warm. Its a lot easier doing it now in the summer...i've never got one to grow in the winter in the house...too cold.

This has been one of the coldest summers ever up here, so a normal s8mmer and my bananas would be a heck of a lot bigger.

How i store a banana is to cut off all the leaves in mid fall (Oct?) and dig up the corm and some roots, wraps the rootball in plastic or a blanket or something and drag the whole works down to the basement. The weight of these things can be a 100 pounds so its not an easy task.. Not all bananas can be stored like this, or so its been said...

Tropicals do fine up here from May through Sept...its the cold months that you have to worry about. During the cold months the KEY is to not water or water VERY little. Water will kill them. Its better to try to get them to go dormant and wait for warmer times. .

The cool thing about bananas is they "pup" and then you've just multiplied your plants. I have a ton of pups coming up right now.

Pineapples have seeds. Here is a good link... Its not easy to grow them..
http://citrus.forumup.org/viewtopic.php ... rum=citrus

[JJ]

This particular banana (Musa Basjoo) will flower/fruit but i believe the fruit tastes not so good. The best bet for fruit would be to go with a dwarfing banana like an Orinoco or a Super Dwarf Cavendish and keep it in a large pot and move it in an out with the seasons. If you could get it to flower in early May? you could probably have some fruit by fall (it probably wouldn't ripen (you could let them turn after cutting, but you would have still grown bananas!). A guy from Chicago on another board got fruit off a monster banana plant so i know its very possible.

The easiest way to start pineapples is to twist of the tops off a fruit and peel away a few of the bottom layers of brown/green leaves and put it in a small pot and keep the soil moist and warm. Its a lot easier doing it now in the summer...i've never got one to grow in the winter in the house...too cold.

This has been one of the coldest summers ever up here, so a normal s8mmer and my bananas would be a heck of a lot bigger.

How i store a banana is to cut off all the leaves in mid fall (Oct?) and dig up the corm and some roots, wraps the rootball in plastic or a blanket or something and drag the whole works down to the basement. The weight of these things can be a 100 pounds so its not an easy task.. Not all bananas can be stored like this, or so its been said...

Tropicals do fine up here from May through Sept...its the cold months that you have to worry about. During the cold months the KEY is to not water or water VERY little. Water will kill them. Its better to try to get them to go dormant and wait for warmer times. .

The cool thing about bananas is they "pup" and then you've just multiplied your plants. I have a ton of pups coming up right now.

Pineapples have seeds. Here is a good link... Its not easy to grow them..
http://citrus.forumup.org/viewtopic.php ... rum=citrus

Frank here is my banana today. It was an eighteen inch "pup" this spring. We just had a torrential rain, our first in perhaps a month. Bing said the deer ate the rest of our sweet potatoes. I got a six foot "rack" of bananas from the "mother" of this plant a couple of years ago, but it necessitated moving the plant into the middle school greenhouse, as it take 18 months for bananas and it freezes here, and my greenhouse is only eight feet high. (nine by thirty three feet though, wonder if I could lay it on its side...nahhh....)

[frankthetank]

Hard to say what it is, but it looks kind of like my super dwarf cavendish. You have a lot more heat down there (especially at night...we've had a lot of 50F nights this summer!) Next time i'm in Florida i'm going to get a few different plants... i want to try Orinoco (popular down there) and a few other types (the bananas are crazy down there)... These things up here are babies to what grows in the tropics.

Here was my SDC last year (i think!)...


The bigger the corm/roots and the stem, the faster they take off next year.

Raining hard here...


My neighbors have got to think i'm am just completely off my rocker... A view of the FRONT yard! To the far left is the basjoos, and then you have the SDCs and then you have giant sunflowers! (mistake on my part, wanted a nice mix of wildflowers and threw in about a pound of old sunflower seeds with the hummingbird flower mix...oops!) and behind the sunflowers are about 10 Musa Sikkmensis (you can see the one to the far right)... In front is a bunch of fruit trees... (i've got 30 on a 1/4 acre lot)... All i want is some small grass paths and the rest is going to be beds... I hate mowing. All the veggies are in the backyard.

[JJ]

wow, yeah your neighbors probably wonder...nice...I've got an assortment of banana seeds off of seedrack.com and grew some calvadash and red velvet, both of which had fruit. here's my dump, my neighbors DO think I'm nuts, mostly because I've talked of die-off, peakoil, etc.





we've made both the front and back yard into garden space, but right now everything is burned up.

[frankthetank]

Are those all Plumeria? That is a lot of watering!

[JJ]

being succulents, plumeria take very little water. the problem is winter time. (they can't go below 40). I have a greenhouse, in which I have vented the dryer. That has worked so far, but obviously my hobby is not post peak sustainable. the irony is (I'm married to a filipina) that in the Philippines, plumeria are considered bad luck (the graveyard plant) and if you bring it home you bring home evil spirits. (Thailand also, its the death flower). I said the Bing; "you have a masters and speak seven languages. you are a devout Roman Catholic (even though she doesn't believe in what the church teaches). Surely you don't believe that?" and she glared at me, and said "maybe..." It's cultural...

[frankthetank]

Aren't they poisonous? They are part of the Oleander? family i think..

Another tropical that grows huge and is kind of fun is Castor bean. The plant has many uses and is deadly (i think its the Ricin in the seeds)... So don't let your kids play with them. I still have a stump in my yard from the last one i grew (didn't grow any this year). The leaves on them are just HUGE. Like giant solar panels.

Do Plumeria go dormant? Can they be overwintered in a cool basement?

[JJ]

Aren't they poisonous? They are part of the Oleander? family i think..

Another tropical that grows huge and is kind of fun is Castor bean. The plant has many uses and is deadly (i think its the Ricin in the seeds)... So don't let your kids play with them. I still have a stump in my yard from the last one i grew (didn't grow any this year). The leaves on them are just HUGE. Like giant solar panels.

Do Plumeria go dormant? Can they be overwintered in a cool basement?

the sap is an irritant. also a cure for herpes simplex (if you get a fever blister, a dab of sap and its gone in twenty minutes). the plant goes dormant in the winter and needs no water from say November to May. water wil actually kill it as it is dormant, and the roots sitting in wet soil will rot. some people put the bare rooted plant in the rafters for the winter. however, its a 80 foot tree, so the larger the pot, the larger the plant.

we had a castor bean plant in our front yard. (I have a lot of little kids here). about five people stopped by my house to warn me that ALL parts of the plants are DEADLY poison. I kinda freaked out and used gloves to pull it up and dispose of it...read later on that it will keep deer out of your yard...