Pineapples grow on short plant. *****They take quite a bit of time to grow, but may be very good for someone who wants to grow their own food but is really good at killing the plants. Lets start with definitions.

How to start.

The three main ways to get the new plant started are, using; tops suckers, and slips. To grow a pineapple plant from tops you need a pineapple. You can get it from the store or any other method, but you need the fruit of the pineapple. From there you need to cut off the top of the pineapple about a half an inch bellow the leaves.

Growing them from Suckers is another method of starting a plant. They take less time then tops to grow and fruit, however they are quite a bit harder to find. Since unlike tops you cant get this from most stores. They are small plant like structures that grow in place of the fruit after the fruit is picked. You can pull them at any stage and plant them and they will grow, but you probably want to get them at***. A plant will typically grow about 1-3 of them, but you can get more by pulling them as the plant will grow them until you stop removing them. They can be very good if you don't want much maintenance since you can just leave them and the plant will die and the sucker will plant and grow in its place. The negative with just leaving them is that the overtime the plants will become overcrowded.

Growing them from slips will be the quickest way to get a pineapple fruit from a plant, they can fruit in as little as a year, but they are also the hardest to find. The typical store bought fruit is of the type 'smooth cayenne' which doesn't produce slips. If you do find a pineapple variety that does produce slips like the 'rough cayenne' they will be found underneath the fruit while it is growing they are small leaf like structures, and should be removed as soon as possible. Slips use essential nutrients from the plant to grow that may cause the pineapple to be less enjoyable.