How To Grow Pineapple On A Windowsill

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Our magazine has more than once told about the interesting experience of growing southern fruit plants on windowsills in St. Petersburg and other northern cities. Readers learned about the experience of cultivating lemon, tangerine and other citrus crops, dwarf pomegranate in rooms and offices … We know that coffee plants are also grown in home greenhouses. And here's another interesting experience - pineapple ripened on the windowsill in a St. Petersburg apartment.

Of course, it is unlikely that it will be possible to meet the family's needs for pineapples in this way, but the very fact of growing a tropical plant and obtaining an exotic fruit in our latitude is very interesting. Moreover, in Russia since the 18th century, pineapples have been grown in greenhouses and botanical gardens. And therefore - the floor is given to the author of the experiment.

I accidentally grew a pineapple. Several years ago we bought this fruit with a beautiful tuft. The pineapple turned out to be very tasty, and its crown was green, and I was sorry to throw it away. And I tried to root it.

Having cut off the crest from the pineapple, I removed the lower leaves from it, leaving a stump (approximately 3 cm long) until root buds appear (these are points on the surface of the stem circumference). I dried the lower part of the pineapple tuft for several hours in the air and put it in a jar of water so that the water reached the lower leaves. I changed the water in the bank after three days. After the roots appeared (approximately 3 cm in length), I planted the pineapple tuft in a small pot (its diameter was 10 cm). A layer of expanded clay was poured at the bottom so that excess water would go away, since pineapple is a tropical plant and does not tolerate stagnant water. I used the most common soil - for indoor flowers from the store. Later I learned that pineapple actually loves loose, nutritious and slightly acidic soil more. I put the plant in a bright, warm place on the windowsill (the windows face west there),so that there is no direct sunlight and no drafts.

After about two months, the pineapple took root. I learned about this by rocking it. The plant sat tightly in a pot. And then I put it in the brightest place on the windowsill. She took care of the pineapple pot from hypothermia in the winter season, because the optimum temperature for keeping it is 20 ° C … 25 ° C. Therefore, at this time, she wrapped the pot with a woolen scarf.

I fed the pineapple along with indoor flowers - once a month from spring to autumn with liquid fertilizers "Effekton" and "Ideal" - one cap per liter of water, alternating them. I watered the plant with warm, settled water inside the outlet. After all, pineapple is a tropical perennial herb of the Bromeliv family, and in its homeland, and it grows in the tropical part of Latin America, water from rains accumulates inside the outlet. In the summer I watered it more often, in the winter - less often.

In the flowerpot, the pineapple flaunted like a green starfish, requiring careful handling as it has sharp tips. By the way, I read that its leaves contain numerous strong fibers, and therefore Latin Americans use pineapple as a spinning crop.

Every spring, I transplanted the plant into another pot with a diameter of 3 cm larger by transshipment, without destroying the clod of earth. The root system of pineapple is very small, so an adult plant grew quite tolerably in a three-liter pot.

Four years later, when the leaves of the plant reached a length of 70 cm, in the spring, when watering a pineapple, looking inside the outlet, I suddenly found a small fruit on a leg with a tiny tuft. And I was very surprised by this. I read that in order to get a plant to bear fruit, you need to specially treat it with acetylene (a colorless gas produced by mixing water and calcium carbide), as is done in countries where pineapples are grown on an industrial scale. I didn't process my plant with anything, but it began to form a fruit! My pineapple grew next to a large aloe plant. Perhaps this neighborhood had a positive effect on the formation of the fetus. I do not know…

In the summer, we took our curiosity to the dacha, and I planted the pineapple in a greenhouse with tomatoes, freeing it from the pot. By the fall, the pineapple fruit grew and turned yellow. The size, however, turned out to be very modest, but the taste was amazing - the flesh was tender, sweet with a slight sourness, fragrant and completely fibrous, like purchased pineapples. After fruiting, the mother's rosette died out, and new small rosettes appeared next to it, which I will also try to grow.

The experience turned out to be very positive, and we decided to try to root all the pineapples that will get to our festive table.

If any of the readers grew a large pineapple fruit - let's share our experience, because almost two hundred years ago our ancestors grew exotic fruits and vegetables for the royal table, but we can for ours!