The journey involved in growing a pineapple takes a lot patience. The watering, and waiting goes on for years. And finally at the end of the waiting – a small shoot appears.
My pineapple journey started in 2018 when I returned from Eleuthera, I was given a few local pineapples from Gregory Town – the sweetest pineapples anywhere in the world and once home to acres of pineapple fields. People use to flock to Gregory Town, Eleuthera every summer to buy the locally grown fruit. I was happy to finally get home, peel and eat it..
After devouring the juicy fruit, I decided to plant the slip and try an experiment I had never done before – plant it to grow another pineapple i always knew it would take two years to produce another fruit, but what did I have to lose? I just needed to put it in the ground and keep it watered.
So that I did – I put it in a pot with soil and kept it on the patio – watering it every few days. Being the patio meant I had to pass it every morning and every night when I got home. And at first, it seemed like the plant was dying. The leaves turned dark and seemed to wilt at first.
But as the days went on, the plant came back to life and started to grow very robustly. The leaves were long and darker than the ones I had seen in pictures or online of pineapple plants. As the weeks went on, the plant kept growing, although not very tall.
After a year and a half, I wondered whether I would actually get a pineapple at all. This was taking far too long. And then it happened – January 2020, the shoot began to make its way up from the centre.
And it continued to grow over the past few months, through the Coronavirus pandemic. At first, it looked like a prickly ball of needles. After a few weeks the top leaves of the pineapple started to take shape until finally – it looked like a mini pineapple sitting on top of a pole.
I wait now for the pineapple to continue to get bigger until the day I can cut it, and replant the slip to once again wait 2 more years. Stay tuned…..