Thailand is an important pineapple producer. And there are incredibly many varieties available in the market. At Discovery Garden Pattaya we show and sell very tasty and very strange looking pineapple plants and explain visitors how to propagate them.
During my youth in Switzerland the only pineapples I knew were round, had a hole in the middle and came in cans. In Thailand I saw my first pineapple plant at the garden of Cabbages and Condoms in Pattaya some years back. And when I saw a potted one with a tiny little fruit in a garden shop I paid 500 Baht for it and bought it.
Propagating pineapples is easy, you just take the crown cutting, tear out some of the smaller leaves on the bottom. Often you find quite big roots there already or small brown points only. You can pot this crown which will root out and have created another identical plant.
It will take an average of 22 months until your plants will start flowering and another 6 months until harvest. Then you repeat the whole procedure.
Normally the different flowers produce one single fruit, the different berries grow together. But at Discovery Garden we have one variety which we call Pattaya pineapple that develops over 50 single and small fruits instead of one big body.
Even though the small tiny fruits smell well, they cannot be eaten, it is far too difficult to peel them, but it is an eye catcher in any garden.
And the bigger the crowns of the fruit get, the less you can see of that interesting multi-headed pineapple. The fruit more and more looks like a freak urgently needing a haircut.
We propagate the Pattaya pineapple at Discovery Garden in Thailand either by cutting off the tiny little crowns or by potting the whole small fruit. These small plants start another cycle and do their head trick again and again. Have a look at other strange looking pineapples grown at Discovery Garden Nong Khai and Pattaya.