Dave Kraus speculates that he has the only pineapple-producing plant in St. Albert.
“Maybe in Canada,” he joked. “It’s certainly a curiosity.”
Kraus admitted he first tried growing pineapples as a youngster and this particular plant is one of many on a long list of attempts.
He cannot remember exactly how old the silvery-grey-green plant is, but guessed that he started the plant at least five years ago by slicing the top off of a grocery-store pineapple and sticking it in a root-stimulant hormone.
“Then I suspended it above some water and when it started to root, planted it,” he said.
The attractive-looking cactus-like plant, which has sharp needles on the end of its leaves, died back three times before really taking off about three years ago.
“We put it in the basement because it looked dead and then one day we looked and it had a tiny green sprout so we brought it back upstairs,” he said.
Then last fall the plant produced a cone-shaped flower and it continued to bloom for about two months. Just before Christmas the fruit started to develop.
“I think the secret is that I put a few rusty nails in the soil,” said Kraus, who explained that the nail remedy came sometime after he read James Michener’s book Hawaii.
“The Hawaiians had trouble with their crop because of an iron deficiency in the soil. They discovered that the pineapple plants did better near an old car junk yard so I decided to give it a try too,” he said.
Last week the pineapple started to turn yellow and sometime this week the Kraus family will harvest it and celebrate with a small-scale Hawaiian party.
“We’ve had a lot of fun with it and even started calling ourselves the C.P.G.A. for the Canadian Pineapple Growers Association. Maybe the scientists would like to examine it as one more sign of global warming,” Kraus said.
