Pineapple
Ananas comosus
The next crop comes off the suckers, not the seed — one fruit, and then the plant hands over.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Gold and chartreuse
- Flower color
- Yellow
- Sunlight
- Full sun, and a heated greenhouse anywhere frost reaches.
- Watering
- Let the compost dry between waterings, and water less again in winter.
- Feeding
- A liquid feed every two weeks in the growing season; foliar feeding works well too.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- February
- Overwintering
- A minimum of 15°C, which means heated glass for the winter.
- Feb–Mar Flowering
- Mar–Jul Fruit Set
- Jul–Dec Harvest
- Jan–Feb Harvest
- Plant spacing
- 11.8 in
- In-row spacing
- 11.8 in
- Between rows
- 2 ft 7 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Fine and fibrous, close to the surface
- Working depth
- 4–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 2.5–4 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
The whole root system sits in the top hand-span of soil, so this is the first thing in the bed to feel a dry week and the last thing that should meet a fork. Hoe shallowly around it, and mulch instead of digging.
A bromeliad, so the root system is small and shallow and most of the water it uses is caught in the cup of the leaves rather than taken from the soil. Water into the centre of the rosette as well as the ground.
Figures recorded for Pineapple itself. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Hoverfly Syrphidae
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com