How to grow a fragrant delicious pineapple at home
This is the case today, but still interest in growing pineapples at home does not wane. Despite the overseas nature, the plant turned out to be rather picky, and a viable and fruiting bush can be obtained even from a tuft cut from a fresh fruit.
In nature, the culture grows up to 60–80 cm and consists of a small stem, studded with sharp long leaves, a fibrous root and infructescence formed at the top of the main shoot elongating after flowering. It is thanks to this compound fruit, which hides the juicy pulp under the keratinized skin, that the plant has become one of the most valuable agricultural crops not only on the South American continent, but also in Africa and Southeast Asia.
To grow pineapple, you can use seeds or cuttings that form on the stem of an adult plant. But the easiest way is to grow pineapple at home from the top cut from ripe fresh seedlings.
How to grow pineapple from seeds at home
Seed propagation is considered the most difficult and time-consuming method. Firstly, you can get seedlings only from purchased seeds. In the fruits sold in supermarkets, there are no seeds at all, or you can find only their whitish immature rudiments.
The seed of a pineapple suitable for germination has a somewhat flattened semicircular shape, reaches 3-4 mm in length and is colored with a brownish or reddish shade of brown.
Before planting, the seeds are placed between layers of a damp cloth for 18-24 hours and, covered, placed in a warm place. Then, when they swell a little, they plant in a wet mixture of purified peat and sand. In order for small seeds to sprout without difficulty, they are buried no more than 1–2 cm.
The containers must be covered with foil or glass and placed in a warm place. It is on the temperature provided to the seeds that their germination and the timing of the appearance of the first shoots will depend:
- At normal room temperature, germination can take from 3-4 weeks to one and a half months.
- If the seeds are kept at a temperature of about 30–32 ° C, the sprouts can be seen in 2–3 weeks.
It is important to maintain not only the temperature regime, but also to moisten the soil in time, and also not to forget about feeding the seedlings. To do this, with an interval of 15–20 days, the crops are fertilized with complex compounds, including the main nutrients and microelements.
When several leaves appear on young rosettes, they dive, transferring a lump together with a small earthlings into the soil for adult plants. Such soil can be made independently by mixing peat, humus, garden soil and sand in equal proportions. To give structure and a kind of protection against infections, crushed charcoal is added to the soil up to 5% of the volume. And part of the sand can be replaced with perlite.
How to grow pineapple from the top at home
If you cannot find seeds of an exotic culture always and not everywhere, then it is quite possible to grow pineapple at home from the top of a fruit purchased in a store, even without special knowledge. True, it is worth approaching the choice of a delicacy that is destined to be given planting material with full responsibility. Pineapple should be fresh, with a green elastic rosette of foliage, without traces of spoilage, cold damage or wilting. When examining, you need to pay attention to the point of growth of the outlet, if it is rotten, dried up or simply absent, it will be extremely difficult to get a new plant.
At home, when growing pineapple, the top of the fruit is cut off with a sharp clean knife, capturing not only the leafy rosette, but the area of the fruit three centimeters lower. If the pineapple is completely ripe, you can carefully unscrew the outlet, holding the tuft tightly with one hand, and the stem with the other.
When the future planting material is received, all remnants of juicy pulp, which can become a source of rot, are carefully removed from the outlet. The short lower leaves are removed to obtain a cylindrical stalk up to 3 centimeters long.
Slices must be treated with a saturated solution of potassium permanganate, crushed charcoal, or, which will speed up the appearance of roots, with an epin solution.
To protect the stalk from decay, it is advised to leave the pineapple for drying for a day or two before rooting. Moreover, it is better to hang the outlet so that it does not come into contact with any surfaces. A video on how to grow pineapple at home will reveal all the intricacies of the process and clearly show all its stages.
Rooting is carried out by immersing the part of the cuttings cleared of foliage in water. You can use a cardboard wheel or toothpicks to hold it at the desired level, as shown in the photo.
When the first roots appear on the pineapple, the rosette can be planted in the ground, and you should not bury the young plant above the lower tier of leaves. The substrate around the seedling is gently crushed and compacted, trying not to damage the slightly numerical roots.
Further cultivation of pineapple at home takes place under a film at a temperature not lower than 20-22 ° C. If it is possible to achieve warming of the air and soil to 25 ° C, after about a month, new bright leaves will appear in the center of the rosette.
While acclimatization and rooting of the pineapple plant is important:
- protect from condensation drops falling on the outlet, causing the development of mold and decay of foliage;
- moisten the soil regularly;
- ventilate plantings, avoiding cooling of the plant.
The pineapple plant pot is placed in a lighted place where the outlet will not be threatened by direct sunlight.
Propagation of pineapple by root cuttings
If there is already an adult pineapple plant in the house, you can propagate it using the daughter processes formed in the lower part of the stem or under the seed fruit, which are easy to break out and root. As a planting material, you can use cuttings that have already given several rows of leaves and have reached 15–20 cm in length.
Like a rosette at the top of a pineapple, the stem can be twisted or carefully cut with a sharp blade. The place of the cut must be sprinkled with coal crumbs, and then the handle is done by analogy with growing pineapple from the top at home.
If the root outlet already has root rudiments, it can be immediately planted in light soil from a mixture of peat, perlite and a ready-made substrate for indoor plants.
How to take care of pineapple at home?
Homemade pineapple care consists in providing all conditions for the growth and development of the plant.
- For pineapple, it is important to select and maintain a loose, nutritious soil.
- Create acceptable lighting, temperature and humidity conditions.
- Pineapple needs well-organized watering and feeding.
When planting pineapple and caring for it at home, you need to remember that the plant does not have a very powerful superficial root system:
- The soil must be permeable to both moisture and oxygen.
- The pot must provide a decent drainage layer.
- The container itself should not be deep, but pineapple treats wide pots very well.
It is best to grow light-loving southern pineapple at home on southern, western or eastern windows. At the same time, in summer, when the sun is hottest, it is better to shade pineapples on the southern side, but in winter plants need illumination, which extends daylight hours by 6-8 hours.
In a healthy specimen, young foliage has a bright green tint. And the leaves from the lower rows are not dry and withered, but gray, tight and juicy. With sufficient light, the rosette forms symmetrically.
The lower air temperature limit for pineapple at home is 18 ° C. in such air the plant goes into hibernation. And for active development, the air must be warmer. In spring and summer, the optimum temperature can be between 22 and 30 ° C.
Homemade pineapple care includes regular, infrequent, but plentiful watering, for which they take warm, ambient temperature, settled water.
On hot days the plants are irrigated, but wet foliage on cold days inevitably causes disease and wilting. The same effect should be expected if the pineapple gets cold air from an open window, or if there is a drying effect from a hot battery.
From mid-spring, when an active growing season begins, and until October, pineapples are fed at home at home. The schedule is organized depending on the state of the plant, but more often organic matter and mineral fertilizers are applied once every 1-2 weeks.
In winter, feeding is canceled, watering is reduced, and the temperature of the content is also reduced.
How to make homemade pineapple bloom and care for it?
Fruiting time in pineapples begins 2–4 years after the formation of the rosette. True, even with industrial plantings, fruits are obtained by treating the plants with acetylene or acetic acid using a special technology. At home, growing pineapple, such methods are not very acceptable, but even here you can force the obstinate plant to form an inflorescence.
Regular feeding of the plant with liquid becomes a good stimulant. organic fertilizer... If the pineapple receives such feeding twice a month during the entire growing season, then after 2-3 months you can wait for flowering. Some experts advise spilling the inside of the outlet with a solution of acetylene obtained from a liter of water and 15 grams of carbide for several days.
A similar effect is obtained by setting a jar next to the pot with a small amount of water and a piece of steaming carbide. During the procedure, it is better to cover the pot with a bag or put it in a greenhouse. Ordinary apples, which release ethylene during storage, can also provoke a plant. To do this, fresh apples are laid out next to the pot in the greenhouse for several days.
Most often, to activate flowering, flower growers use fumigation of the plant with ordinary smoke. This procedure should last 10-15 minutes and be repeated 2-3 times in a week.
2-3 months after processing, with proper care of the pineapple at home, first an inflorescence appears, and then, after 30 days, an ovary appears. Fruit ripening lasts from 4 to 6 months, after which you can taste the pineapple grown with your own hands.
I also grow pineapple at home.