Can You Grow a Pineapple in a Botanium?

Can You Grow a Pineapple in a Botanium?

And even if you can - should you?

The answer to the first question is quite obvious; otherwise, this blog post wouldn’t exist. As for the second question - bear with us, and you’ll get our verdict.

Getting Started

When growing pineapple, the easiest method isn’t using seeds. Pineapples are usually propagated from the leafy crown, which is much faster and more reliable. Growing from seed is possible, but it’s slow and unpredictable.

Propagating from a crown also means you’re cloning the original pineapple. In theory, this clone should produce a fruit just as good as the original - provided it receives the same environmental conditions such as light, nutrients, and consistent watering.

To start our pineapple journey, we picked up a regular pineapple from the supermarket. We gently twisted off the crown and removed some of the lower leaves to make space for roots to develop. At the very least, it’s a good idea to remove any dry or brown leaves.

Next, we let the crown dry for a few days before placing it on top of a glass of water, with just the bottom part submerged. After a week or two, roots began to emerge from the base. That was our signal: time to move it to the Botanium.

Planting in the Botanium

We filled the growing container with medium up to the base of the crown, then placed the crown and filled in around it. From there, it was like growing any other plant: we added Botanium nutrients and placed it somewhere bright. In our case, that meant under a 15 W grow light running 12 hours per day.

And then... the long wait began. Growing a pineapple is not for the impatient - it can take several years before the plant produces an edible fruit. Pineapples are tropical and thrive in abundant, year-round sunlight. They’re also remarkably drought-tolerant thanks to their thick, waxy leaves. Forgetting to fill the water tank occasionally isn’t a disaster. Pineapples can store both water and nutrients in their leaves, making them well adapted to poor soils. Still, regular watering and feeding are recommended for the best results.

Inducing Flowering

After about a year of growth, the plant had matured significantly. We decided to try an old trick to induce flowering. Normally, a pineapple plant waits until it reaches a certain size before blooming, but you can encourage it to flower earlier by exposing it to ethylene gas.

This might sound odd, but ethylene is a natural plant hormone released by ripening fruit. By placing fruit peel - like banana or citrus - in the crown of the pineapple, you can stimulate it to bloom. We used mandarin peel and waited.

Before long, a flower stalk emerged from the center of the crown. It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. The “flower” is actually a dense cluster of small flowers that later fuse into the pineapple fruit. Like with other fruiting plants, we hand-pollinated the flowers with a brush to transfer pollen between them.

Fruit Development and Harvest

Just as with growing the crown, developing the fruit takes time. After a few months, the pineapple gradually turned from a dull brownish hue to a vibrant orange - signaling it was ripe and ready to harvest. Although smaller than store-bought pineapples, it was impressively large compared to the container it grew in.

And the taste? Sweet, sour and very tasty - though milder and less sugary than a commercial pineapple. We suspect that using higher nutrient concentrations during fruit development might have boosted the sweetness, much like how tomatoes get sweeter and peppers get hotter with more nutrients.

Final Verdict

So, is it possible to grow a pineapple in a Botanium? Absolutely. Should you? Only if you’re patient. The process takes years, but the result - a homegrown pineapple sprouting from your Botanium - is both rewarding and pretty spectacular.