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In nature, or rather not plantations, where today you can find cultivated varieties of pineapple, pineapple plants can grow up to one and a half meters. These are powerful herbaceous plants, for 1–1.5 years, gaining strength, forming and giving the opportunity to ripen large, juicy stems, beloved by many fruit.
You can also get your own pineapple at home:
- purchasing one of the miniature ornamental plants in a specialized flower shop, often offered with a small fruit at the top of the shoot;
- planting their own crops using a top outlet of a purchased ripe pineapple.
The first method needs to be recognized as more costly, but also the simplest, since the method of rooting and further home cultivation of a pineapple from a green cutting is a process that involves a number of difficulties and is rather lengthy.
Still, there are many enthusiasts who take on this work and not only receive an unusual houseplant, pineapple, but also seek its flowering and ripening fruits. Which option to choose?
Pineapple: indoor plant from the top of the fruit
If you decide to grow pineapple yourself, it is important to find the most fresh fruit in the store with a strong, green rosette that does not have a growing point.
On a decent procreation, there should be no signs of mold, rot, signs of frostbite and other effects that affect the viability of the plant. At home, with a pineapple, capturing a couple of centimeters of the fruit, cut the top. So that during the rooting the rotting of the cutting does not start, remove the remnants of the flesh and bark from the sheet rosette, remove the dried lower leaves. If the pineapple is ripe, the top outlet can be unscrewed by tightly wrapping the stem with one hand and the cutting with the other.
Rooting pineapple at home, as in the photo, can be done in a light, loose substrate consisting of a mixture of peat, perlite, sand and crushed charcoal, or in water. And in fact, and in another case, the cutting is preliminary:
- is dried;
- is treated with a root stimulant;
- sprinkled with crushed charcoal.
To maintain humidity, a container with a top outlet is covered with a bag or placed in a greenhouse, where the future plant will have to stay until the first roots appear.
The pineapple root system, whether it is a houseplant or a varietal fruit crop, is not very powerful. It develops quite close to the ground surface, so waiting for when a tangled bundle of roots appears in a container of water is not necessary. To make acclimatization easier, it is better to plant a sheet rosette with roots up to 2–4 centimeters long into the ground.
A mixture of garden soil, peat, sand and perlite will be suitable as a substrate for planting indoor flower or pineapple from a green cutting.
The components are mixed in equal proportions, and as a structuring and disinfecting substance, up to 5% of the volume of crushed charcoal is added to the soil.
Conditions for the growth of pineapple at home
Pot for home-grown pineapple take a wide, but not deep. At the bottom, a drainage layer is necessarily provided, and the plant is planted during planting by only a few centimeters. It is important that the pineapple remains immobile until it is fully rooted. Therefore, watering it requires extreme care.
The appearance of young bright green leaves from the center of the rosette indicates the final rooting of the indoor pineapple plant. Old foliage begins to dry out and die.
If there are no signs of renewal within two months after planting, this indicates rotting of the base of the cutting or damage to the growth point. This top will have to be removed, and rooting should be carried out with a new outlet.
So that the soil and old foliage does not become a place of concentration of harmful microorganisms and pests, dead leaves are regularly removed.
There is an increased demand for watering the plants near the pineapple room. For moistening the ground, separated warm water is used, not colder than air. A culture that loves to grow in an acidic soil can add a little citric acid to the irrigation water. Watering is carried out once a week, making sure that between the procedures the soil does not dry out, but also does not accumulate excess moisture.
Pineapple can be watered so that water gets inside the outlet. The structure of the plant is such that the moisture accumulating on the leaves necessarily rolls to the base of the stem and falls to the roots. The main thing is that at the same time the ground is not excessively humidified, and the air is not cooled below 23 ° C.
The optimum temperature for keeping such a houseplant as pineapple is 23–30 ° C.Only for a period of rest, lasting from autumn to spring, the temperature can be reduced to 18 ° C.A higher temperature background causes the plant to stop growing, and a flowering pineapple can throw off the inflorescence.
The best place in the apartment for a pineapple houseplant is the southern, western or eastern windows, where the pot with a flower should be protected from direct sunlight, drafts and drying out heating devices.
As you grow up, as in the photo, the pineapple at home will have to find a spacious lighted place. And if necessary, I will equip the plant with an illumination that ensures the duration of the daylight time of about 12-15 hours. With the onset of the dormant period and air cooling, watering is somewhat reduced, but the lighting should not be less.
Growing pineapple as a houseplant, you need to know that the culture is a perennial, in the first year forming a leaf rosette, and the second is ready to bloom.
In the summer pineapple is useful to put in the garden or on a warm, protected from the wind balcony. A year later, in the spring the plant is transplanted into a pot of larger diameter. And it’s best to do this by simply loading an earthy ball into a new tank and pouring a new soil mixture on the sides and on top.
This technique will give pineapple an incentive for further development. But this is not enough for the pineapple to feel completely comfortable. Therefore, indoor culture from spring to autumn must be fed with complex liquid means, and also in hot periods crown irrigation is applied.
In detail about the creation of conditions for the plant and the necessary care will tell a video about pineapple at home.
Pests and diseases of the indoor pineapple plant
Under conditions of a flat, pineapple lays the danger of being affected by pests and diseases that often arise when plants are overwetted or when the temperature is not observed.
And pests to pineapple, as to a room flower, mealybugs and spider mites are “not indifferent”.
If the soil has not been thoroughly sterilized before planting, the root system and the plant stems may suffer from nematodes. On houseplants, transferred to the garden for the summer, you can see aphids and flakes. Insects can be strained by treating the green part with soapy water and using insecticides.
How to make room pineapple blossom?
Often when growing pineapple at home, the plant does not hurry to blossom. To provoke a culture for the formation of inflorescences, it is necessary to use the technique used on the plantations.
In early spring, adult plants are treated several times with acetylene obtained from calcium carbide and water, or with ordinary smoke, which in a month or one and a half should result in a rounded inflorescence over the rosette.
Spike consisting of densely planted flowers on the stem reaches 7–15 cm in length. The number of room pineapple flowers can amount to dozens, each of which has a greenish or purple perianth and a crimson or purple corolla. The corollas unfold gradually, starting at the base of a cone-like bud. As a result, flowering lasts about a month, and then begins the growth of ovaries, quickly merging into a single, juicy stems.
Ripening pineapple can last up to six months. This period depends on the cultivated variety and type of plant.
In order to facilitate the care of the plant, it is better to choose, as in the photo, pineapples, at home, forming miniature decorative or edible sweet fruits.
When a ripe fruit is cut, the plant loses its point of growth, therefore, as in industrial plantations, it is better to renew it by planting one of the rooted lateral processes that appeared on the mother plant during its growth. This measure is necessary both for plants obtained from apical rosettes and for pineapple houseplants purchased from the store.
