A fully ripe pineapple may sometimes have seeds. Anyone who likes to experiment and breed new varieties as a hobby gardener should sow them. The following instructions show the way to successful propagation by sowing seeds.
How to sow pineapple seeds?
To sow pineapple seeds, harvest and clean the seeds, soak them in lukewarm water for 24 hours, plant them 1-2 cm deep in seed pots with peat sand or perlite, and keep them at 28-30 degrees Celsius and more than 80% humidity until they germinate after 8-12 weeks.
Seed harvesting is purely a matter of luck
The cultivated pineapple from the supermarket rarely contains seeds. Since seeds are undesirable in modern fruit, they are simply bred away. The fact that pineapple plants are self-sterile also plays a role. As a result, the fruits thrive without fertilization - no fertilization - no seeds. If fortune favors you, you can still get a copy with seeds.
Choose a particularly large fruit, as up to 30 seeds can be hidden here. They can be discovered 5-15 millimeters beneath the brown shell. With a length of 2-3 millimeters, a width of 1 millimeter and their reddish-brown color, they clearly stand out from the golden yellow flesh.
Professional sowing of pineapple seeds
If the harvested and cleaned kernels are in front of you, they first receive pretreatment. If seeds come from fruit pulp, they always have a hard shell to inhibit germination. Since they are too small to roughen the casing with a file, they are soaked. Place the pineapple seeds in lukewarm water for 24 hours. Then handle the sowing like this:
- fill small cultivation pots with peat sand, perlite or commercial seed soil
- Insert one seed 1-2 centimeters deep and sieve thinly
- spray with lukewarm rainwater or pour from below
To get the seeds in the mood to germinate, a temperature of 28-30 degrees Celsius and a humidity of more than 80 percent are required. Ideally, a heated mini greenhouse (€85.00 on Amazon) is available for this purpose. Alternatively, place a plastic bag over each potty. The seeds usually take 8-12 weeks to germinate. During this time they must not be exposed to direct sunlight.
Tips & Tricks
Did you know that a pineapple is not a single fruit, but rather a fruit group made up of more than 100 berries? These come together around a fleshy inflorescence axis in the middle of the juicy, sweet pulp. This fruit axis is also edible, but not very popular due to its hard consistency.