Call me a farmer

I did not inherit my parents' green thumbs. To be honest, playing in the dirt was never my thing, but there have been rare occasions when I felt inspired to plant something. After our pool was built, I placed large flowering pots and palm trees around the deck. One summer, I tried growing herbs, and during springtime several years, I tended to the hanging plants on my front porch. After a month or so of watering and conversing, I become tired of the heat and the effort it takes to maintain plants, and more often than not, they wilt, die, or never grow. My husband will tell you he takes over responsibility from any of my attempts--yes, that is true.

I have more of a blue thumb--from ink--than I do a green thumb.

My father's thumb planted flowers and trees. My mother's thumb cultivated items first in our kitchen before they went into the ground. She'd take the seeds from the food we'd devoured, jab them with toothpicks, so they rested on either side of a cup of water, and those cups sat on our kitchen sill until green shoots appeared. Avocado pits were a favorite of hers. Eventually, after moving to Florida, she took to growing pineapples.

You can read HERE and HERE, where I wrote complained about having to maintain her plantation of pineapples when she was forced into a wheelchair. She'd sit in it and direct, pointing at this plant, pointing at that plant, and making me bend over in uncomfortable positions to trim the leaves and clear out the debris from the pots. I was always a sweaty mess when I was finished, bleeding from holes in my arms where I'd get poked from the plant's spiky leaves. Frankly, I think they were telling me to leave them alone. I mean, how much pruning actually goes on at a real plantation? My gues--very little.

My mother always wanted me to take the plants home and put them in my yard. She thought they'd do better in the ground, but while I didn't know if my husband would like a pineapple plantation, I also didn't believe my mother could get along without her plants. So, I never took them home--until she died. Then, I did it as a tribute, especially after I offered her plants to her condo neighbors, and her downstairs neighbor took the most abundant, healthiest plant, throwing it in the garbage so she could use the pot for something different. Lesson learned.

I brought home four plants, I think. Every year I've had a pineapple. Every. Year. Some years I get one, some years more. The little pineapple pops out in April, the month when my mother died, and by July, they are ripe and ready to pick. We take every top from these pineapples and stick them in our yard. We genuinely do have a pineapple plantation, although we've lost a few plants. This year I harvested three pineapples.

This pineapple is the second fruit from a plant near my mailbox. It is from a pineapple top of my mother's plant, and it gave us fruit last year. We picked this fruit second this summer, and some parts of it weren't as sweet, so I used it to make pina colada.

This came from another top we put into the ground in front of our house. It got so large, I had to stake it so it could finish ripening. When it came time to harvest it, all I did was remove the stake, and the pineapple fell over and popped right off the plant. This fruit was very sweet, and we ate it in one sitting.

The last pineapple was from my mother's plant in the backyard. These plants aren't as colorful, large, or as healthy-looking as those in our front yard, and this little pineapple never grew any bigger. I found it odd, so I turned to the Internet, where I learned more than when I originally researched growing pineapples. Most of it entailed getting out into the plantation and getting dirty if I want my next crop to not be as small as this little sucker.

My plants are a ratoon crop and require the least amount of work. Yep. My kind of farming. Unfortunately, ratoon crops grow smaller each year if not plucked from the mother plant and replanted. Ugh. Since my mailbox plant already has three new shoots, I will have to remove these eventually and place them separately in the ground if I don't want them to kill one another off by competing for light, nutrients, etc. 

Looks like if I'm going to continue being a pineapple plantation owner, I'm going to need to invest in gardening gloves. My mother would be so proud.