Recommended with Florida Special Pineapple Plant
- Product Description
- Planting & Care
- Shipping Info
Florida Special Pineapple Golden Deliciousness!
Originally bred for Florida production by the Libby Fruit company, the Florida Special was grown in Immokalee, FL until Libby sold out to Nestle. The Florida Special produces golden fleshed pineapples with great flavor AND the leaves are spineless! Unlike other pineapple varieties, Florida Special fruit has been shown to take mid 30F’s without ruining the fruit. Fruit Ripens in September. Recommend growing in containers in zones 8B and colder, to allow for easier protection during freezes.
Cold Hardy | 20-25° |
---|---|
Container Plant | Container Friendly |
Growing Zone | 9A, 9B, 10A, 10B, 11A, 11B |
Mature Height | 3 FT |
Mature Width | 3 FT |
Pollinator | Self Fertile |
Spacing | 3 FT |
Sunlight | Full Sun |
Fruitscaping with Pineapple Plants
Pineapples are in the bromeliad family. This family thrives in warm climates and will grow well outside in zones 9B and 10. For us less fortunate gardeners dealing with colder climates, pineapple become a fun and easy to grow container plant. The plants put on an unrivaled show of beautiful purple blooms in spring, followed by  months of pleasure watching the baby fruit grow into great big pineapples, The fruit ripens in late summer. If you’ve ever eaten a “bush ripened†pineapple, you will not go back to eating store bought ones. The commercial varieties often lack the sweetness and complex flavors of the varieties the home gardener can grow.
Recommended Fertilizers for Planting and Maintenance
- Starter Fertilizer:  Plant with Espoma Organic Bio-tone® Starter Plus. This will increase root mass and help avoid transplant loss in difficult planting conditions.
- Fertilizer to Maintain:Â Â Our varieties of Pineapple Plants work great with Espoma Organic Citrus-tone Fertilizer.
Growing Guide
We do not currently have a growing guide for Pineapple plants. We are working on this and will add it in the near future. Contact us if you have questions on how to plant and nurture your Pineapple plant, and we will be glad to have one of our gardeners assist you.
Additional Information
Things to Know About Pineapples
It takes about two years from the start of a new shoot or sucker, to get to the flowering stage. Once the sucker reaches maturity the plant will signal flowering often by flushing with a pink or red color to the base of the leaves. The shoot will take about 6 months to finish growing and ripening the pineapple fruit at which point it dies. The plant will continue to develop suckers from the base, and it’s these new suckers that will fruit in the future. To help the plants fruit properly, plant your young plants in a well drained container mix, place the container in full sun, water with a light solution of liquid fertilizer or fish emulsion weekly and keep the plants above freezing in the winter. After a few years the plant becomes crowded with new suckers and needs to be divided. Trade or give the babies to your friends.
Shipping Restrictions
We’re so sorry… but due to agricultural restrictions we cannot ship any plants outside of the United States, or to the states of California, Hawaii and Alaska. Also, citrus trees cannot be shipped outside of the state of Florida.
Here are some important things to know about your shipments
Unpacking Your Plants Guide:  Prior to receiving our plants, please click this link to read our Unpacking Your Plants Guide to get to know the steps to keeping your plant healthy after receiving it.
We do NOT ship bare root:  Our trees are shipped in the same exact containers they are grown in, for the most healthy transition. The plants are watered well before they are packed and wrapped in a shipping bag to ensure they stay moist during transit. It’s as if you came and picked them up right from our nursery yourself!
Why do we not offer free shipping? At Just Fruits, we price all of our plants online exactly as we do in the nursery. Therefore, the shipping cost is simply what it costs for us to get your order from the nursery to you. Many competitors may increase the plants’ prices in order to hide shipping costs… we do not do that. We want our customers to see exactly what the plant costs are, separate from what the shipping costs are. That way if you decided to come visit the nursery to pick up your plants instead, you would know how much you save in shipping.
Weather Watching:  We now ship all year round! However, we do watch for extreme weather. If there is extremely cold or hot weather expected around your shipment date and on your path of shipment, we will contact you and notify you that we plan to hold the shipment for the next possible shipping date with better conditions. If you ask us to still ship it, through the conditions, we will not be responsible for any damage caused to the plant & UPS will not refund any claims. We love our plants, and do not want to see them die, so we would rather wait until it’s the right time to ship it, than risk losing a plant in transit.
Growing Calendar
- Planting
- Pruning
- Harvest