I use 16-16-16 because it is more concentrated. My pineapple patch is pretty big and very spikey (I wear safety goggles when reaching into my pineapple patch). I take about 1/4 cup of fertilizer and hand place it around the base of the pineapple plant. If you broadcast the fertilizer over your pineapples the granuals will get caught in the base of the leaves and burn the plant.
Pineapples are bromiliads and get much of their sustenance from the air. Here in Hawaii they grow like weeds. One plant will make slips and suckers and in a few years you will have dozens growing where you planted just one.
AFAIK no pollenization is necessary to create fruit, so clones they are. Pineapple seeds are tiny little black things (about the size of a gnat) and can be found in the outer portion of the ripe fruit meat, where the little circular part of the fruit skin (formerly the flower) impinges into the fruit meat. A friend of mine once grew a pineapple from a seed he found while eating a pineapple just to see if he could do it. It took a couple of years, and he got a nice fruit from seed. Everyone else grows them from tops, or slips, or suckers.
Being clones, they are true (WYSIWYG). The drifting is saved for the dirt track racers ("Turn right to go left!")
Some people like to start tops in a small glass of water. It's pretty cool to do it that way. Tiny little root nubs form where the removed leaves used to attach to the trunk. I have found no advantage to starting tops in dirt or water. Being able to watch the roots form by water starting is fun though. Change the water often.
I just take my tops now and throw them back into the pineapple patch. If the grow great, if not they become mulch. Most grow.
Topic: growing pineapples (Read 16540 times)
