Hurray for home grown foods

....or at least my homegrown pineapples. I just picked one, and was struck by how absolutely different it looks than the ones in the grocery stores.

It was growing out to the side of the plant, so I put one of my kayaks underneath it to support the developing fruit.
(Otherwise the weight would have partially snapped the stem, causing most of it to die and rot.)

Here's the fruit just after picking.

As you can see, it looks a lot different than the horribly green things that you get in a store. Like a lot of fruits, they get sweeter if you leave them on the plant as they ripen. This will be a pretty good one. There's still a hint of green between the scales, but if I left it on the plant any longer it would probably get eaten by an opossum.

Pineapples left on the plant this long get REALLY sweet....so much so that my ex was shocked when she first ate one....she thought I had added sugar to the fruit when I cut it.

That looks delicious. I bet it's sweet as can be.

NICE! Got started late this year, and had an early cold snap. But yeah. Something very satisfying about growing your own food. I can't believe we used to PAY for stuff like Rosemary and Basil!

I've never had a fresh one. But if the difference is as great as on the watermelons we grew one year, I can believe it.

A world of difference between maui pineapples and those from south america. They pick 'em a week or two later, and when you're on Oahu, life is good. Same with those apple bananas. Never look at chiquita the with the same disdain as the day you eat your first local. I've had the same experience with tomatoes grown in nor cal. It simply does not get better than that.

Hey! That's a nice-looking pineapple!

It was a lousy year for my garden. I usually have a pretty good garden, but this year, the highlight of the summer harvest was picking hornworms off the tomato plants and watching the chickens fight over them. They even had a tug-of-war with one of them! Great fun, but nothing grew well except my green peppers.

My green peppers did pretty good too, except they were supposed to be red peppers

Can we visit you and get a pineapple? That looks delicious!

Really neat thing about pineapples is how you can recycle them. Take that top section that you cut off, put it in good soil, and wait. Might take a year, but you will get a new one. We love "Garbage Gardening". Have 5 avocado plants going now from pits. Have done pineapples several times.

cwh wrote: Really neat thing about pineapples is how you can recycle them. Take that top section that you cut off, put it in good soil, and wait. Might take a year, but you will get a new one.

Yup. That's how I got all the ones in the flower beds of my back yard

I've never done the avocado thing, but my parents have a few that they've started the same way.

How long does it usually take an avocado plant started from a pit to produce more avocado?

We have grown avocados from pit to 4' tall, but have never gotten fruit. May take 6-7 years, also may need to be a grafted plant to get fruit. We do it just for fun.

poopshovel wrote: My green peppers did pretty good too, except they were supposed to be red peppers

I believe they turn red after a while? At least that's how all of my peppers have been.

yeah mine got red. my wife picked the first batch while they were still green

i grow as much as i can, but being up here in the cleveland area our growing season is much shorter and you need to time stuff really well or you've got stuff half grown when the frost comes. the first few frosts did not get my plants in the raised beds for some reason so i still have peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce still growing and ripening. we didn't buy tomatoes, peppers, squash, beans, peas all year. and i got my first pie pumpkin this year and made an awesome pie with it. we froze many bags of green beans for winter because the little guy loves them. i don't care for them but the organic purple ones i grew this year were pretty good done in cast iron on the grill with a little butter and garlic.

cucumbers too - i did not do any this year but my dad did. between us we made 50+ jars of pickles from those. i froze lots of tomato puree and canned some homemade sauces. it all tastes better when you grow it yourself.

Our little (10'x20') garden did extremely well this year. We canned 25 quarts of tomatos and had fresh ones for salads all summer. Cucumbers as usual did great, had plenty for salads and made 20 pints of pickles. Had enough green beans for us and gave some to relatives.

But the green Bell peppers were the star of the garden. Had stuffed peppers for dinner four times. Also stuffed and froze 20 more for later plus 15 butter tubs of cut up peppers for cooking this winter.