Adding More Pineapples

This is pineapple season, so as I'm harvesting pineapples for home use, as gifts, or to trade, I'm getting a lot of pineapple tops. These tops are how I primarily start new plants. Around here, tips don't get discarded. No way! They get replanted to start more plants. Oh, eventually I'll have as many pineapples as I can handle, but I'm not near that limit yet.  

So since that last time I listed a tally, I've added 41 new pineapple plants to the tally, all of them scattered about the farm rather than in organized beds. And more tops are waiting for garden space to open up. 

When I can't get right away to planting a top, I will clean up the bottom (pull lower leaves off the stem) and place it in water. I'll use whatever small jar I have handy for this task. After a week or so, the tops start pushing roots, so it gets critical to plant them asap. A few of these tops have been sitting in water for over a week, so this weekend they need to get into the ground for their best chance of growing well.

I grow both the golden and the white varieties, though I have a strong preference to the white. But at this stage of the game, I'm not throwing away any golden tops. They'll get planted too as I open up space for them. Whenever I finally have a glut of pineapple plants, I plan to gradually discard the golden ones.