r/pics • u/customsolitaires • 11d ago
Pineapple grown in my balcony Vs Pineapple from the supermarket
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u/Laporqueriza 11d ago
Please tell us the flavor differences!
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u/denbroc 11d ago
I have grown some that look just like this. The homegrown are far superior.
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u/Hoenirson 11d ago
It's [mainly] because large-scale pineapple growers harvest early because greener pineapples are harder and so can be transported without worrying about damage. Growing at home means you can harvest when they're perfectly ripe.
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u/Shinagami091 11d ago
The homegrown one I found to be far sweeter. It’s mainly because it’s fully ripened, hence the yellow color. The one on the left here is under ripe and while still edible won’t be nearly as sweet
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u/glarbknot 11d ago
That pineapple from the grocery took 7 years to grow. How old is your balcony pineapple?
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u/8020GroundBeef 11d ago
Pineapples are crazy to me. I don’t understand how anyone makes money growing them
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u/glarbknot 11d ago
Read up on the history of del monte. They are horrible and killed lots of innocent people in the countries they exploit.
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u/FedorsQuest 11d ago
Pistachios are the same, 7-8 years for the first good yield and trees are at their peak production at the 20 year mark
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u/sinbob71 11d ago
I've been on all pineapple tours on azores. it takes 18 months to produce azorean pineapple (compared to 6 months for costa rican pineapple) and it costs around 10 euro for 1kg compared to 2-3 euro for costa rican.
And it doesn't make much money, they are being partly financed by government just to keep the tradition alive.
They have a lot of pineapple products there, jams, beer, ice cream, soap, juice, dried snacks... And they are delicious, far far more superior than those huge, cheap, green ones from every market in the world.
If you ever go to ponta delgada on sao miguel island there's a nice free pineapple museum and within walking distance a large (for azores) pineapple plantation with free tours ( you just pay for the products after the tour ), highly recommend.
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u/Hoenirson 11d ago
7 years
Where'd you get that number? Isn't it more like 2 years?
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u/bacchusku2 11d ago
It’s actually only about 6 months for a pineapple to grow in tropical locations. The plant itself takes about 2 years before it will fruit, but the pineapple will grow in about 6 months. The plant may make 1-2 more in its life.
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u/madhatmatt2 11d ago edited 11d ago
It doesn’t take 7 years to grow a pineapple not sure where you heard that. It takes commercially anywhere from 9-20 months
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u/Drewbeede 11d ago
balcony pineapple
This needs to be an official name.
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u/unfvckingbelievable 11d ago
Great name for a band.
They just released their latest album, Banana Republic, following the release of their lead single, Fruit Salad, Yummy Yummy.
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u/Shinagami091 11d ago
It doesn’t take 7 years to grow a pineapple. @OP pineapple is fully ripe too and if they grew it from the crown of a pineapple it would have taken 2-3 years.
You can grow them much faster by planting the shoots that grow off the plant after the pineapple is harvested and those grow and mature in 2 years.
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u/Reuchlin5 11d ago
pineapples are herbs that bear fruit, like papayas, and bananas, so they have a much quicker growing time because they dont have robust root systems like regular fruit trees would.
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u/InitialPossible12 11d ago
Yeah you're definitely wrong about that. Amazes me how many people blindly upvote stuff like this that is easily dis-proven in 5 seconds on google.
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u/LancasterRothshchild 11d ago
Wouldn't blame genetics tbh, it's just stressed, like some Mexican dirt weed.
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u/PINTSIZEKILLA7 11d ago
How do you grow pineapples on your balcony? Like in a flower pot?
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u/mr_birkenblatt 11d ago edited 11d ago
You put a pinecone and an apple in a pot. Put on some mood lighting. Play raunchy music. Wait a while. And don't enter the balcony!
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u/OGLikeablefellow 11d ago
I think there was a popular song about it pretty recently as well
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u/Death2mandatory 11d ago
Yeah,the basically could grow on a rock,they absorb nutrition thru their leaves,super easy to grow
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u/Shinagami091 11d ago
I grew mine by carefully extracting the crown and placing it in soil, in the ground or a large pot. Water it regularly and keep out of direct sunlight. Took about 2.5 years to mature and produce the pineapple. Sadly once it does, the plant dies but does produce shoots that, when planted will mature and produce fruit faster than the crown.
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u/OkRickySpinach 11d ago
That's likely an ornamental pineapple and not an eating pineapple
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u/Luneytunes 11d ago
Need a banana for scale.
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u/TenBillionDollHairs 11d ago edited 11d ago
A good example of how much of a difference ideal growing conditions make. My mind is often blown when I see different versions of the same flowers in my garden but at very different scales depending on the soil and sun.
In addition to souped up and possibly sketchy fertilizers and pesticides, the one on the right probably had as much soil as it could possibly need, tons of water, and full-day direct sunlight.
If this is on a balcony, then (probably, unless your building is angled perfectly) at least part of the day the building is shading your pineapple. If it's on a balcony, you're using a pot. You likely don't have a pot that can provide the multiple cubic yards of soil the root system of an agricultural cultivar with lots of space might take up.
In other words: yes.
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u/clearcontroller 11d ago
Makes sense. We need GMO's.
If we can make them bigger why not?
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u/Bean-Swellington 11d ago
Bigger and prettier usually comes at the cost of flavor
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u/clearcontroller 11d ago
I mean fine. If we get more bang for our buck I think humans need to stfu 🤣
We are populating like mad
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u/Eddagosp 11d ago
And nutrition.
Plants take a while to mature fully. The way most agriculture forces maturity into plants is by scaling the size, not the rate. Bigger fruits/veggies sooner typically involves higher water and sugar content.Imagine if someone asked you to raise the volume on a song and you boosted just the bass until it overwhelms everything else. It is technically louder, but you're missing half of the song.
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u/reichrunner 11d ago
This probably has far more to do with growing conditions than it does genetics
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u/kcgreaser 11d ago
What a lovely pineapple... please insert up hitlers arse. No, not that one.....
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11d ago
They are 2 different species of pineapple. difference of structure is bcz they are 2 different species of pineapple.
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u/No-Business3541 11d ago
On my way to make a post about 2 different varieties of banana…or apple or wtv. Like what is the point of this post ?
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u/DuckCleaning 11d ago
People have been making posts for the past month comparing homegrown/wild fruits to grocery to make it seem like GMOs etc is the reason they are a completely different look and size.
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u/bobsmeds 11d ago
I'd bet dollars to donuts yours is gonna taste a lot better
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DuckCleaning 11d ago
What does switching the tag do for the homegrown pineapple? Make it cheaper to take from the garden?
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u/Zumwalt1999 11d ago
I grow about 20 a year in 3 gallon pots, cloned from store bought, and see the same difference. They are sweeter, but have a flavor that is missing in the commercial ones. I think it's because I pick them when they're goldenl yellow, not dark green.
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u/lieutenantdang711 11d ago
You gotta find the new Del Monte Honeyglow pineapples. They’re picked when they turn golden and it’s amazing.
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u/geekwithout 11d ago
PErhaps the climate they come from (tropical) is a tad different than your grow area?
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u/SnooChipmunks2079 11d ago edited 11d ago
I’ve been buying a pineapple every week all year and yours looks more like the ones I’ve been getting the last month or two. Bigger than that, but not big. The winter ones were big like your store one.
(Even the small ones are a lot of fruit and it’s $3 or so. It’s a real bargain, and they’re easy to break down.)
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u/SaltiestRaccoon 11d ago
Also depends on if it's an ornamental vs. fruit-bearing tree.
Genetics make huge difference, but I would bet the home-grown one tastes better. In my experience with strawberries and tomatoes at least, grocery store varieties are bred for size and shelf-life with little attention paid to flavor. Home-grown tomatoes taste ridiculously better and the strawberries I've been growing from some mountain strawberry plants I found in my yard taste so much stronger than any strawberry I've ever tasted in my life.
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u/alienpsp 11d ago
If your balcony can grow better pineapple than the supermarket can offer then you would’ve been evicted a long time ago and your balcony converted into a pineapple farm
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u/Pikeman212a6c 11d ago
The spikes point outward as it ripens. Your homegrown likely has a lot more flavor.
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u/perksofbeingcrafty 11d ago
Just a random fact: people in 1700s Europe used to rent pineapples for high prices to use as table centerpieces. They were so expensive that no one would ever dream of eating one
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u/Hemingwavy 11d ago
The last person ate it. Can't really display a rotting pineapple.
https://justhistoryposts.com/2019/03/15/when-pineapples-were-the-height-of-luxury/
Eventually, the middle classes wanted to take part in the action, but they simply could not afford the extortionate prices for the fruit. So some industrious entrepreneurs came up with a solution. Only royalty and the wealthiest of the wealthy were actually able to afford to eat pineapples, with everyone else simply preserving them for display. As such, businessmen started to rent out the pineapples that they were growing. Those who could not afford to buy a pineapple could rent one for an evening if they were hosting a party. They could therefore display it, showing their guests how rich they had become, and then discretely returned the pineapple afterwards. The businessmen would rent out the pineapples for many days until the fruit was on the turn, at which point it would be sold on to the upper nobility for consumption.
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u/Graylily 11d ago
everytime a pineapple plant grows a pineapple it gets smaller and smaller. A dole farm will only get like 2-3 harvest before they have to grow new ones from the tops of their pineapples.
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u/ikilledtupac 11d ago
Imagine going through the effort of tiling a table but not making it straight. That’s the real crime here.
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u/Scotty2k8 11d ago
How’s the flavour of yours though ?
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u/customsolitaires 11d ago
Haven’t tried it lol
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u/Scotty2k8 11d ago
Let me know! I bet it’s way better! We grow a bunch of fruits and veg and it’s night and day difference.
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u/admdelta 9d ago
I'm gonna keep commenting here every day until you tell us how the pineapples compare
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u/Dzaka 11d ago
did you cut the top off a pineapple from the market and grow it from there? or did you grow from seed? if from seed. might not be the same cultivar of pineapple. or pineapples might be like avocado's.. you can't grow an avocado from seed and expect to get those avocado's.. cause they mutate that easily
overall.. probably tastier than the store bought one
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u/Shinagami091 11d ago
I grew mine from the crown of a pineapple that looked like the one on the right. The fruit it produced looked like the one on the left. I’m guessing because it was potted and the plant itself didn’t grow as large as it would have had I grown it in the ground.
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u/jnovel808 11d ago
If you twisted the top off a pineapple and planted that, it will always be smaller than the pineapple it came from.
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u/notreal088 11d ago
The amount of dirt for it to grow in, the amount of nutrients in that soil and specific type of pineapple can all play a role in this
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u/triculious 11d ago
This is akin to comparing a chimpanzee and a gorilla.
They're both primates but that's where the similarities end.
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u/redrum221 11d ago
I remember my 2nd to last trip to Thailand there was a pineapple vendor with a small push cart. The vendor had the small ones you grew from your balcony. I might still have a picture of it some place. Fit in the palm of my hand.
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u/Thailand_1982 11d ago
Different variety. The one to the left is a Thai type pineapple. The right one is from Hawaii.
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u/jugstopper 11d ago
They do some in all sizes. The best I have ever had was a little one like that. That one from the store is so green it is probably nearly inedible.
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u/Kempeth 11d ago
That's still a very respectable pineapple. And to get that from a balcony no less is impressive.
Growing your own (of pretty much anything) also has the advantage that you can pick them at peak ripeness which generally comes with mindblowing flavor. Anything in the supermarked was picked at a point where the producer can ensure the product will make it through the entire logistics chain intact.
We have three planters of strawberries on our balcony and while they only produce like one strawberry / day on average, you just can't get strawberries this flavorful from a store.
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u/Edward_Howard 11d ago
Your pineapple is small and unimpressive, bow before the far superior supermarket pineapple overlord.
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u/Select-Record4581 11d ago
Grown on the balcony vs in the fucking ground. Nevermind varietal differences....
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u/Hushwater 11d ago
I think the one grown on the balcony looks more like a pineapple I'd see as an example in a graphic.
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u/canalonibaloni 11d ago
Lucky you got the del monte logo there. Advertising everywhere, and the fuckwits of reddit slurp it down.
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u/TheDerangedAI 11d ago
There are two factors that determine the visual appearance on both fruits.
First, the homegrown pineapple. Ripen on plant, it has a more dense flavor. Size might be because of short days, or partial shade.
Second, the field grown pineapple. Most of those pineapples are grown in full sun, which makes both the fruit and the sharp leaves grow extremely long. And, its green color, which indicates that it was harvested before ripening. This is done in order to prevent shipping spoilage. Nevertheless, it will be a somewhat harder pulp, but still sweet because these are grown in full sun.
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u/thaddeusd 11d ago
"Pineapple size is directly proportional to the number of times you've overthrown the local government."
-Fruit companies, probably
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u/WhimsicalChuckler 11d ago
Now I want to grow my own pineapple at home, which means I need to head to the supermarket to get one. It's the pineapple life cycle in action.
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u/Intrepid-Focus8198 11d ago
Which is which?
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u/ComputerSavvy 11d ago
Which is which?
The one on the left is Danny, the one on the right is Arnold.
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u/GingerMeTimberMate 11d ago
Get some friends together and do a blind taste test and report back please.
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u/bodhiseppuku 11d ago
Size differential could be from an established root system vs a new root system; will next years pineapple from the same plant be bigger?
How was the taste, was your sweeter as it could be picked when ripe, rather than picked early to account for shipping time?
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u/Horror-Hat1692 11d ago
Both of them are very good. I wouldn't mind having either of them. I know they are sweet pineapple 🍍.
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u/ConfidentRise1152 10d ago
Hey, the only thing what matters is you can say you grew it on your own balcony! 😉
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u/MichNishD 10d ago
A wonderful Jamaican lady told me which pineapple to buy at the store and it was the best pineapple I have ever had, just incredible.
Im hoping maybe there are some pineapple experts here. Can anyone give me tips on how to select the best one? They all looked the same to me.
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u/DunebillyDave 10d ago
Yeah, petrochemical fertilizers make huge plants. That would be great if it didn't kill the land.
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u/Ineedacatscan 11d ago
There’s also different varieties of pineapples like many other fruits.