My pineapple plant

[Oppido]

Hi, I have been growing some pineapple plants for a few years (since summer 2019), including the one I want to discuss in this thread, which I believe to be the Champaca variety. Originally, when I bought it in summer 2019, there was only the main plant that brought the fruit to maturity by October 2019 (note that when I bought it, the plant already had the fruit and simply grew it a little and then ripened it). More or less in November/December 2019, two seedlings were born from the root of the original plant and since then I have always had these two seedlings (note that when I say that I have these two seedlings left, I am referring to the container in which I had repotted the original plant, in fact I planted the tuft of the fruit in another pot). From that moment on, the plants continued to grow continuously (although in winter the growth slows down considerably, but it still continues to lengthen the leaves) until 2023, when for reasons that I identified in the type of water I gave them (tap water) they dried up the new leaves (and unfortunately the plant born from the tuft died). Subsequently, after reading around online that pineapples prefer rain or distilled water, I always watered them with demineralized water and since then they are fine. After a few months that I noticed this problem, the central leaves started to grow again (approximately around mid-June 2023 I noticed that they had put on new leaves). Then they started to grow continuously again until today, without ever flowering. The plants are not too big, maybe because it is the variety or because I water them once a month from November to April/May and twice a month from May/June to October. I have never fertilized. As for the sunshine, it only has morning sunshine, both in summer and winter, about 7 to 9:30-10, because my balcony faces north. Can you tell me why the plants have never flowered so far? Can you give me advice on what I should do to make them flower? Would it be better to induce them to flower or do you recommend that I let them grow a little longer?

When the wind blows the plants appear unstable (although I don't think that's the reason for the lack of flowering). These are the photos taken today.

Thanks for the answers

This is a fruit

 

[happypalms]

Nice little plant. Give it as much sun as possible. And try not to overwater it. Here’s a couple I have in the ground and what happens to them if you don’t pick them before the possums get them.

[happypalms]

13 hours ago, happypalms said:

Nice little plant. Give it as much sun as possible. And try not to overwater it. Here’s a couple I have in the ground and what happens to them if you don’t pick them before the possums get them.

Greetings you can’t do anything to make them  it takes a long time at least 4 years. Give them as much sun as possible. Clean them up by removing all the dead leaves, you can stack them by tying them to the stake somehow. You don’t need to fertilise them they tolerate hot dry conditions well and grow under such conditions. Place them where they will get rainfall. 

[Oppido]

36 minutes ago, happypalms said:

Greetings you can’t do anything to make them  it takes a long time at least 4 years. Give them as much sun as possible. Clean them up by removing all the dead leaves, you can stack them by tying them to the stake somehow. You don’t need to fertilise them they tolerate hot dry conditions well and grow under such conditions. Place them where they will get rainfall. 

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I fear that, at least for this plant, it is not possible to put it in a sunnier position. In your opinion, is it possible that the fact that in 2023 it had that problem of drying out of the small central leaves, with consequent delay in growth of about 5-6 months, has compromised the flowering of the plant, and therefore it is as if it were starting, let's say, from scratch? If so I should wait at least until 2027, right (I hope I managed to explain what I mean)?
Also, congratulations on your very beautiful plants and shame about that beautiful fruit eaten by the possums. Do you know the name of the variety you are growing and how many years have you been growing them? It seems different from mine, yours seems to produce larger fruits.

[Oppido]

Hi, I've noticed this swelling at the base of the leaves in the largest pineapple sucker for about 3 days now. Do you think it could finally be an inflorescence (sorry for the quality of the photos, not exactly exceptional)?

[Silas_Sancona]

10 hours ago, Oppido said:

Hi, I've noticed this swelling at the base of the leaves in the largest pineapple sucker for about 3 days now. Do you think it could finally be an inflorescence (sorry for the quality of the photos, not exactly exceptional)?

Looks like an inflo / future fruit to my eye.

[SeanK]

Appears you will be a father. You may have to mist it daily and keep it warm as winter approaches 

[Oppido]

Here I am after a week. The flower seems to have grown quite a bit in these seven days.🤩 Who knows when I will be able to harvest the fruits?

[Oppido]

From what I can see, it looks like the other plant is about to put out a beautiful flower too.

[Oppido]

Pineapple update. The inflorescence is becoming very visible also in the second pineapple.

 

[happypalms]

18 hours ago, Oppido said:

Pineapple update. The inflorescence is becoming very visible also in the second pineapple.

 

Nice one there easy to grow they just need good drainage. They will take a long time to ripen as well. But it will be the sweetest tasting fruit you ever eat.

[Oppido]

On 6/27/2025 at 11:42 AM, happypalms said:

Nice one there easy to grow they just need good drainage. They will take a long time to ripen as well. But it will be the sweetest tasting fruit you ever eat.

Hi, how long should it take for the fruit to ripen? What are the optimal temperatures and thermal extremes I should be aware of for fruiting?

[Urban Rainforest]

Im not sure of the variety but if you can get ahold of one of the white pineapples from Hawaii do so! Hands down the best tasting pineapple Ive ever eaten!

[Oppido]

Pineapple update:

 

[Oppido]

23/07/2025:

[Oppido]

Update from yesterday, July 25th. The temperature reached +42,8°C, while the minimum was +30,2°C. I gave him 3 liters of water, I hadn't watered him for a week.

[Mazat]

On 6/13/2025 at 9:54 PM, Silas_Sancona said:

Looks like an inflo / future fruit to my eye.

😄

[Mazat]

On 7/26/2025 at 8:59 AM, Oppido said:

Update from yesterday, July 25th. The temperature reached +42,8°C, while the minimum was +30,2°C. I gave him 3 liters of water, I hadn't watered him for a week.

Wonderful. Here it's probably too cold, unfortunately ☹️, but we'll try it anyway ...

[Oppido]

Update 16/08/2025:

[Oppido]

Uptdate 02/11/2025:

[Oppido]

[Las Palmas Norte]

Lookin' good.

[quaman58]

Great thread here. These things are definitely a learning curve for me as well. My wife started a bunch of plants several years ago from the tops of store-bought pineapples. So far we’re working on only our third fruit; I suspect my relatively cool Mediterranean environment slows everything down.This latest one is looking good however, the top that she harvested actually split into two plants which has always looked good and grown really well. Big plants, probably close to a meter in height. The fruit itself may not be the size you’d buy in a store, but it’s definitely the biggest one that we’ve ever grown. 

[JohnAndSancho]

I just started 2 from store bought crowns. Apparently it's normal for them to spear pull and dry out before they start to grow and root? I cleaned both of them up really good, scraped off as much fruit as possible, peeled back a few layers of leaves off the bottom of both, and have them in shallow cups of water to develop some roots.

[quaman58]

6 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I just started 2 from store bought crowns. Apparently it's normal for them to spear pull and dry out before they start to grow and root? I cleaned both of them up really good, scraped off as much fruit as possible, peeled back a few layers of leaves off the bottom of both, and have them in shallow cups of water to develop some roots.

We have traditionally let the tops dry out for a few days before trying to plant them. When we haven’t done that, sometimes they’ve rotted out. She just kind of plunked them down in a little pot with potting soil and it seems like they start rooting within a couple weeks.

[JohnAndSancho]

8 minutes ago, quaman58 said:

We have traditionally let the tops dry out for a few days before trying to plant them. When we haven’t done that, sometimes they’ve rotted out. She just kind of plunked them down in a little pot with potting soil and it seems like they start rooting within a couple weeks.

Yeah, I read up and watched a few YouTube videos and let them dry enough to callous over and made sure they were dry before setting them in the water. It's just really funny seeing something completely brown and spear pull and being told "yeah that's fine and normal" coming from a palm background. 

[Brad52]

I live in Hawaii so I don’t have to work very hard at it, but I generally keep around 20 going at any one time.  I had to build a fenced in area because the wild hogs got every single one of mine two years in a row.
 

 My practice is to twist the top off let it dry for a random number of days then when I remember it, I get back to it and peel off lots of lower leaves then I just shove it into the dirt, in about 12 to 15 months, I expected it to start to flower and set fruit,  in all I expect roughly 18 months from the time I plant to the time it’s got a ripe fruit. 
 

By the time they’re ripe, they generally have multiple offsets visible on the mother plant which we call slips and you can just twist those off and plant those like the tops so when you initially plant one top you end up with another top and several slips per plant.  When I harvest the fruit, I lift the entire plant out and then strip off any slips I might’ve missed and discard the original plant.

A couple days ago I counted 18 plants with no sign of flowering and one with a nearly ripe pineapple so apparently though produce an off-season fruit as well.

 

Here’s a picture of my current guy - last photo - and some pictures of older crops.  In the 3rd picture there are multiple slips visible.

 

 

[Brad52]

On 12/14/2025 at 2:24 PM, JohnAndSancho said:

I just started 2 from store bought crowns. Apparently it's normal for them to spear pull and dry out before they start to grow and root? I cleaned both of them up really good, scraped off as much fruit as possible, peeled back a few layers of leaves off the bottom of both, and have them in shallow cups of water to develop some roots.

Hmmm, don’t think I’ve ever seen spear pull on a top except on plants that have already set fruit?  I was taught to always lift the plant and replant the slips but don’t leave in ground;  plants that have had fruit harvested, the slips on those don’t grow as well as slips that are removed and replanted.

This makes me wonder if the ‘normal’ to spear pull means people are planting ‘spent’ plants and waiting for slips to get going?  Anyway, if I had a top that spear pulled I would toss it but perhaps others have diff results….

 

In my third picture above those slips that are visible I would go ahead and twist off right now before I even harvest that pineapple those are ready to plant.
 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

2 hours ago, Brad52 said:

Hmmm, don’t think I’ve ever seen spear pull on a top except on plants that have already set fruit?  I was taught to always lift the plant and replant the slips but don’t leave in ground;  plants that have had fruit harvested, the slips on those don’t grow as well as slips that are removed and replanted.

This makes me wonder if the ‘normal’ to spear pull means people are planting ‘spent’ plants and waiting for slips to get going?  Anyway, if I had a top that spear pulled I would toss it but perhaps others have diff results….

 

In my third picture above those slips that are visible I would go ahead and twist off right now before I even harvest that pineapple those are ready to plant.
 

 

It's starting to root after that so we'll see how it goes - I'm probably a long way away from getting slips, these are just crowns off store bought pineapples. I figured why not give them a try with everything else I'm going, worst case scenario I get free foliage from something I ate anyway. 

[Brad52]

Once the flower has started to look like a pineapple the slips will start growing and at some point before harvest you can twist those off and plant them.

[Brad52]

On 3/22/2025 at 3:01 AM, Oppido said:

Hi, I have been growing some pineapple plants for a few years (since summer 2019), including the one I want to discuss in this thread, which I believe to be the Champaca variety. Originally, when I bought it in summer 2019, there was only the main plant that brought the fruit to maturity by October 2019 (note that when I bought it, the plant already had the fruit and simply grew it a little and then ripened it). More or less in November/December 2019, two seedlings were born from the root of the original plant and since then I have always had these two seedlings (note that when I say that I have these two seedlings left, I am referring to the container in which I had repotted the original plant, in fact I planted the tuft of the fruit in another pot). From that moment on, the plants continued to grow continuously (although in winter the growth slows down considerably, but it still continues to lengthen the leaves) until 2023, when for reasons that I identified in the type of water I gave them (tap water) they dried up the new leaves (and unfortunately the plant born from the tuft died). Subsequently, after reading around online that pineapples prefer rain or distilled water, I always watered them with demineralized water and since then they are fine. After a few months that I noticed this problem, the central leaves started to grow again (approximately around mid-June 2023 I noticed that they had put on new leaves). Then they started to grow continuously again until today, without ever flowering. The plants are not too big, maybe because it is the variety or because I water them once a month from November to April/May and twice a month from May/June to October. I have never fertilized. As for the sunshine, it only has morning sunshine, both in summer and winter, about 7 to 9:30-10, because my balcony faces north. Can you tell me why the plants have never flowered so far? Can you give me advice on what I should do to make them flower? Would it be better to induce them to flower or do you recommend that I let them grow a little longer?

When the wind blows the plants appear unstable (although I don't think that's the reason for the lack of flowering). These are the photos taken today.

Thanks for the answers

This is a fruit

 

To me these all look like planted tops so that is a good start.

[Brad52]

On 12/4/2025 at 9:56 AM, Oppido said:

The yellowing fruit one looks close to harvest to me, you might want to Google how the 'scales' should look nearing harvest but the main test is to sniff it - it will smell like pinepple when ready.

[John2468]

Here was my pineapple that I grew in a pot many years ago, it took nearly two years to set fruit. Unfortunately the opossums got to it before I did and the whole plant died without producing pups.

[JohnAndSancho]

11 hours ago, Brad52 said:

Hmmm, don’t think I’ve ever seen spear pull on a top except on plants that have already set fruit?  I was taught to always lift the plant and replant the slips but don’t leave in ground;  plants that have had fruit harvested, the slips on those don’t grow as well as slips that are removed and replanted.

This makes me wonder if the ‘normal’ to spear pull means people are planting ‘spent’ plants and waiting for slips to get going?  Anyway, if I had a top that spear pulled I would toss it but perhaps others have diff results….

 

In my third picture above those slips that are visible I would go ahead and twist off right now before I even harvest that pineapple those are ready to plant.
 

 

Ok yeah, I think that first one is toast. It straight up stinks, it's pushing roots out the bottom but it's also rotting at the same time. Oh no I might have to spend another $2.68! 

[Brad52]

This fruit is beginning to show slips now…

[JohnAndSancho]

I just bought another one. And my god do I have a lot of mangos to eat and germinate. 

[JohnAndSancho]

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong trying to root out crowns? I twist it off, I cut and cut and cut and cut some more until I'm confident I've got all of the fruit off, I peel off layer after layer of leaves and stick it in a shallow cup with barely any water and a squirt of H2O2 in it, and - I've got one more to cut up, the first one rotted, the second one hasn't rotted yet but it doesn't smell very pleasant - are they supposed to stink?

It smells like an "I had several pitchers of draft beer and peanuts for dinner" fart. I'm keeping it out of direct light, I change the water, I make sure it's not drowning - but it just smells like beer farts. 

[Brad52]

Maybe skip the soaking and just plant them in mostly cinders or some other well draining material?  I have never soaked mine.

[JohnAndSancho]

2 hours ago, Brad52 said:

Maybe skip the soaking and just plant them in mostly cinders or some other well draining material?  I have never soaked mine.

I was trying to water root them. I cut further this time and I'm gonna let this one and the new one dry out again for a few days and just stick them in coir/perlite and hope for the best. I sprayed the smelly one with copper fungicide. 

[Brad52]

So you should be able to grab the fruit by the top, twist, and have the top come off with very little fruit pulp.  Then just peel leaves off until you have enough stem exposed to be able to pot/plant the top but let sit for a few days and that should be enough to plant it w/o water involved.  Granted, this is Hawai'i but if I just toss a top into the yard and do nothing else, it will eventually root and grow a plant w/o stripping any leaves etc.