David, have you started a pineapple from the top of a ripe fruit? It's so easy you will laugh. Buy a nice one with healthy looking leaves at the grocery store. Eat the fruit, and peel off any remaining fruit from under the leafy top. If there are dead or dying leaves at the fruit/leaf junctionyou can remove those, too. You may even see roots starting on the core already.

Just stick the top into a pot of potting soil, keep it warm and moist and it should take off for you. Should save you a year or two on growing from seed, you get to eat the fruit, and it's fun seeing it perk up and start to grow. About 2 years from a top-start to new fruit. This is one I started from a top:

Gleni said:It is a pain climbing up one, David.

Now THAT would be something in my Northwest Missouri Zone 5 B garden! To grow my OWN coconut tree and grow it large enuff to climb!!

Yeah Elaine I described my pineapple above. And my failed attempt at from seed as well. My top grown pineapple is like 8 or 9 months old now. Looking good so far. The seed one lasted about 3 months.

You would really have to post a warning on that palm. "watch out for falling coconuts". Those could really do some damage.

Yeah Carol - like I am so worried. hehe

I was sitting at an outdoor table in South FL once, enjoying an adult beverage when a coconut fell and missed me by inches. I felt it going by. Yikes, I am surprised more people aren't killed by coconuts, those things are heavy.

I saw them along the side of the roads in Hawaii, and thought of how much damage they could do to your car, falling from thirty feet up there.

So right, Carol. Plus, in a hurricane they fly around like cannonballs. Here they grow out on the barrier islands and everyone is very careful to remove any coconut that is even approaching maturity to keep them from falling on things and people.

Removing them must be an interesting operation!

Truck with a cherry-picker for the street trees, anyway.

Rainbow said:

• Pineapple (Ananas comosus)
• Uploaded by Rainbow

• Pineapple (Ananas comosus)
• Uploaded by Rainbow

WooHoo

When we lived in Hawaii at Hickam AFB, a truckload of Samoan guys would pull up in the alley behind our houses. They would fan out and climb the coconut palms in our yards, barefooted with machete in teeth. They trimmed the old fronds and all the coconuts. The falling palm leaves are more deadly than the coconuts. They cleared the leaves and kept the coconuts. I was told the coconuts were their compensation for trimming the trees.

On my one trip to the big island, there was one selling coconuts in the farmers market parking lot, complete with machete and straws. I guess there are some places you can live off the land. Sure beats the panhandlers here!

There are 2 in this pic, in the right forefront, and another one toward the back. The bigger, closer one was started last summer, the farther one is from May of this year. Both were started by cutting the top off & laying it on the ground & kind of pushing the dirt up against the sides. The big bulb thing is a Crinum lily surrounded by some Sedum rupestre/reflexum. The blooms are ornamental purslane (Portulaca umbraticola.)


These are not hardy here, will have to come inside (again for first one) or in GH for winter.

In May I decided to plant my pineapple in the ground in my new tropical bed. It is doing well and has grown a bit. It is ~ 18 "tall now. In Oct I will repot it and bring it in to the Living Room.

I started it from a top mid-summer '15.

Just an update, I did not hide my pineapple this winter season. We already had some hard freeze warnings, and temps lately goes down to the low 30's. So far it is still enduring well. Will see how it goes in January to Feb.

28Dc2016

I had unsuccessfully attempted to root pineapple tops in the past but this summer, I found one in the compost pile that had developed roots. I potted it and placed it in the greenhouse with my bromeliads.

My question is, I noticed that many of you trimmed off the lower leaves. Is there a reason?

Oh I just had to trim it, the older leaves dry out, looks ugly, or sometimes it gets in the way with some plants, so had to trim it off.

Thanks much. I know on the bromeliads, I wait to remove the full leaf when they dry out but wasn't sure if I needed to trim these back.