Apparently half the country is growing leeks in glasses on the kitchen bench. If you buy leeks with roots and put the rooted offcut of the bit you used for dinner in a few centimetres of water, the centre of the leek will continue to grow. The growth won’t be the soft silky white treasured part of the leek, but it will be edible, and it is speedy. You can do the same thing with spring onions.
As grow-your-own indoor produce, though, leek cannot compete with pineapple.
The first person to fruit a pineapple indoors and tell people about it was Agneta Block, a 17th century Dutch art collector, artist and horticulturist. After the death of her first husband, Block bought a country house and filled it with curiosities, in the fashion of the time. She did the same in the garden, planting it out with exotic plants that she and her friends painted.
Through her horticultural connections she acquired a slip (a few leaves from the base) from a pineapple growing in the Horticultural Garden at Leiden. She nurtured it in one of her hothouses and managed to fruit it in about 1688. This was such a phenomenal feat – pineapple being a tropical bromeliad indigenous to South America – that she adopted the fruit as her personal emblem. A few years later, Jan Weenix painted Agneta, her husband and two, unidentified, children. A pineapple, still attached to its stem and leaves, sits in pride of place. (The painting is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum.)
Through the late 17th century, pineapples were luxury items throughout Europe: slaves on colonial plantations in the tropics were put to work producing fruit for a golden export business. The uber-wealthy ate them; aristocrats on a tighter budget could rent them to display on the sideboard at extravagant dinners.
To grow your own pineapple treasure, start with a fruit that has leaves attached. Slice off the top, about a centimetre below the leaves. Remove a few layers of the lowest leaves then use a sharp knife to trim away the pineapple top until you see small, brown bumps around the edge of the stem. These are the root buds.
Let the pineapple top callous over for a few days, then plant it into a light mix. Water it and place it in bright but indirect light. Keep the mix moist (but not wet) for a few months. Once the roots have developed, let it dry out between waterings.
To get fruit, you’ll need at least six hours of bright light a day, which admittedly is hard to come by indoors. Outdoors, choose a full-sun position. Channel Agneta Block’s patience and perseverance. It can take a good three years to fruit a pineapple in Sydney, but how good will it taste when you do!