Greenhouse Gardening – Pineapple

If you want to try growing a greenhouse pineapple – be patient, depending on our summers, and where you live in the country, it can take up to seven years to fruit! To begin, select a pineapple with a healthy green rosette of leaves which you then need to cut off (don’t twist it, as this can damage the area you want to use to grow a new plant. While you enjoy munching on the fruit you can prepare the topknot by trimming off the excess skin and flesh around it and pulling off any brown leaves at the base – these are all locations where rot can form or where bacteria can be lurking so you need to cut around the base to leave the clean central core surrounded by leaves.

Now very carefully peel away leaf after leaf to reveal a length of stem. This is where the roots will develop – and from here you need to trim the base of the stem neatly, just below the leaf scars, removing all the white stem tissue.

Fill a pot with gritty compost, then position the topknot in the centre, firming more compost around it – fine gravel is a good addition to the soil, to ensure that there is plenty of air circulation.

Place the pot in a warm, bright position in the greenhouse to root. New green leaves will soon develop from the centre of the topknot to form an attractive plant which you can move indoors as a houseplant, but if you want to try for fruit, keep it in the greenhouse and maintain a feeding and watering schedule, potting on as required, and your plant may go on to produce a central flower and small fruit in about three years' time.

Greenhouse gardening pineapple photograph by Moonsoleil, used under a creative commons attribution licence