Gardening and Food Production

House Husband Plants a Pineapple

  • November 25, 2016
  • 2 min read
  • 135 Views

I’ve moved to a farm with lots of man infrastructure, and I’m wending my womanly essence through the place. Where to start. I have about a hundred projects on the go right now, so here’s a simple one.

Buy a pineapple. Eat the pineapple. Let the top dry out on the bench for a few days (this is my kind of project). Pull off the lower leaves. I delegated the deleafing and planting to my house husband while I was at work, so I had to pull it up again to get a photo. Isn’t he wonderful.

Stick it in a pot of soil. Water from above, because it mostly absorbs water and nutrient through its leaves. I’ll leave my pampered pineapple in the shadehouse for now, because it gets pretty hot here in summer. Yes, those are wicking beds made out of old freezers. They were already here. That’s another post!

Pineapples are bromeliads. They can survive dry soil, poor soil, sun or shade. They grow well in pots, so you can easily bring them indoors in frosty climates. Frost or waterlogging will kill them. I don’t know if they grow in my temperate area, but this website was encouraging.

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It will probably take two or three years for my pineapple to fruit, so for now I get to enjoy the mandala leaves. Growing plants at the edge of your climate range is good insurance for climate change (permaculture principles 10 & 11: use and value diversity, use edges and value the marginal).

And now I will get back to my other 99 projects!

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rachel

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