How to Know When a Pineapple Is Ripe & Ready to Be Picked From the Plant
After watching and waiting for months, your developing pineapple (Ananas comosus) is slowly changing colors and harvest time is finally on the horizon. Depending on which part of the pineapple plant you use for propagation, the time from planting to ripe fruit can take years, so you’ll want to make sure you pick the fruit at its prime for peak ripeness. Once you know what to look for, you’ll be harvesting your pineapple at the apex of its sweetness and will realize when you sink your teeth into it that it was well worth the wait.
Propagation Material and Harvest Time
Temperatures play a role in how long you have to wait to harvest a ripe pineapple. Considered a bromeliad, pineapples are tropical plants that are hardy growing outdoors in USDA zones 10 through 11, but they also perform quite well and produce fruit when planted in containers, which allows gardeners in colder regions to grow them.
The waiting time from planting to harvesting pineapples also depends on the type and size of the plant material you use for propagation. Propagation starts that are larger take less time to establish, thus cutting the time to flowering and fruiting. You have four options for propagating a pineapple that all result in production of one fruit, but some take almost twice as long as others to go through all the stages to fruiting.
Suckers and Ratoon Suckers: Pineapple plants produce two types of suckers, and both take approximately the same time to produce fruit. Regular suckers form around the base of the pineapple fruit in the leaf axils. Ratoon suckers form around the base of the mother plant. Both types of suckers take approximately 16 months from planting to flowering and then another six months to produce a ripe pineapple.
Crowns: Pineapple crowns are the leafy tops of the fruit and are the slowest method of propagation. The time from planting to flowering takes around 28 months and then another six months for the pineapple to ripen.
Slips: Slips form along the stalk holding the pineapple generally at the bottom of the fruit, and their leaves have a distinctive curve at their bases. Another type of slip, the hapa, forms further down the stalk but the bases of its leaves don't curve.
Flowers and Fruiting
Pineapples grow and perform best during periods of warm weather. This means that a pineapple plant started in spring takes less time to flower and develop fruit than one planted during fall or winter.
Pineapple flowers develop in the center of the rosette, where up to 200 individual, bisexual flowers form. After the flowers form, it can take 50 days or more before they begin opening, one at a time, with one to 10 flowers opening early in the morning and then closing during the night. The flower petals are white at the bottom and a bright blue-violet color at the top. The entire flowering cycle can take up to 40 days to complete, and once the cycle is finished, the pineapple fruit begins developing.
Pineapple Fruit and Ripening
Pineapples are classified as a seedless syncarp, which is a fruit that forms when all the flowers fuse together into one. As the fruit moves closer to harvest, the fruitlets begin to flatten and the outer skin of the pineapple begins to change from green to yellow. The ripening process starts at the bottom of the pineapple and slowly works its way up to the top.
Pineapples are ripe and ready to harvest when the entire outer skin develops a yellowish color and a pineapple smell and the flesh is an orange-yellow color. It’s best to allow the fruit to fully ripen on the plant because once picked, it won’t get any sweeter, although the outer skin will continue to ripen. Each fully developed pineapple can weigh up to 5 pounds, but fruit grown from crowns is generally smaller than those found at your local market.
Harvesting and Storing
When harvesting your ripe pineapple, use a clean knife or pruning snips and cut the pineapple from the stalk at the fruit’s base. Before cutting, wipe your blades off with rubbing alcohol so that you don’t transfer any diseases to the mother plant and the developing suckers or pups. If you harvest the pineapple before it totally changes colors, you can allow the outer skin to finish ripening indoors at room temperature. Don’t refrigerate fruits that aren’t fully ripe because the cold interferes with the ripening process and chill damage can occur. You can store ripe pineapples in the refrigerator for about a week before using.
Joyce Starr has been a professional writer and editor for over 15 years, specializing in the topics of horticulture and home improvement. For 20 years, she’s owned a garden center and landscaping/consulting business and holds numerous horticulture certificates. She’s covered numerous DIY home topics and has hundreds of articles published on gardening topics. Her work appears in SpaceCoast Living magazine, Atlanta Constitution Journal, SFGate Home Guides, 1-800-Flowers and many more.