3 hours ago, Brad52 said:

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.

I am the Palmtalk King of Overcomplicating Things And Then Can't Figure Out Why It Went Sideways. 

 

Yes, it's a long title, but I've earned it. 

Picked mine today, only two slips tho.

My first attempt rotted, my 2nd attempt rooted, my 3rd attempt I cut off too much, and we'll see how #4 goes (just potted up) 

#4 rotted. But #2 is starting to push new growth and is firmly rooted in a 1g pot. So I'm batting .250. I dunno if I'll try again, I'm sure I will at some point. I don't know what I did differently other than running peroxide through the crown of this one, maybe that's the key to growing them indoors in pots. 

I harvested the fruit of my Champaca pineapple. And what can I say? It's much smaller than the first fruit I had, due to a lack of nutrients and, in part, water (I didn't fertilize it and watered it only with distilled water).
On a positive note, the fruit did not suffer from "Black Heart" disease, despite my absolute minimum temperatures of +6.5°C and +6.8°C with hail on January 11-12, and strong winds with heavy rain on January 20-21 (Cyclone Harry). The fruit continued to ripen and grow well into the winter, and the flavor was identical to what you'd expect from a pineapple ripened on the tree.
I still have some growing to do to understand how to handle pineapples when they're bearing fruit. In any case, thanks everyone for the advice you've given me. I'll definitely put more effort into my next pineapple, since the other plant still has the other little fruit growing (although given the average January temperatures, below +15°C and the heavy cloud cover, it's growing slowly).

Tis season I guess…

 

These require some patience in my part of the world, but this one is cool. At least 6-7 years old from a store bought pineapple top that my wife planted, which then split into two growing sections. It’s always looked great though, being a really large robust plant and never having any brown tip issues. One side began fruiting in late August of last year and is still developing. The other side is just getting going as well. How common is it for these to bifurcate?

5 hours ago, quaman58 said:

How common is it for these to bifurcate?

" Commercial " cultivars might offset slightly less than wild plants,  but all Ananas  will produce some deg of ground level pups / offsets. Could be wrong but think they stay closer to the " mother " plant than offsets < ..also called " Ratoons "...  >  produced by Bromelia. 

Note all the shots of clumps, vs single / individual plants here:  
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/122965-Ananas-comosus/browse_photos

Getting closer to ripening

On 5/9/2026 at 3:25 AM, quaman58 said:

These require some patience in my part of the world, but this one is cool. At least 6-7 years old from a store bought pineapple top that my wife planted, which then split into two growing sections. It’s always looked great though, being a really large robust plant and never having any brown tip issues. One side began fruiting in late August of last year and is still developing. The other side is just getting going as well. How common is it for these to bifurcate?

Out here, I was taught that once the top you plant sets a fruit take the offsets off of that plant twist them off and plant them on their own. If you leave them on the mother plant, they will make much smaller fruit.

I can never remember which of these are yellow pineapple or the white pineapple until suddenly they explode in yellow. I see in the lower right corner a later planet just starting to flower you can see the pink in the center .

Had a neighborhood get together just to celebrate the harvest :)..