Pineapple paradise

Shortly after we moved here, sometime around the fall of 2008, I planted a pineapple top cut from a pineapple we got at the store.  It slowly grew out in the backyard and now FINALLY we have a ripe pineapple! 

I was getting a little worried that this little guy would get ripe while we were visiting MN. I would hate to wait 18 months for a pineapple to grow and then miss out on it!  Well yesterday we went ahead and picked our pineapple.  

We cut it up after dinner tonight and it was really sweet and tasty.  One of the best pineapples I've had, so I guess it was worth the wait.  Now supposedly in another year it might produce another one, that's a long wait!


But our banana tree has decided to produce a bunch of bananas, so in a while we'll have some more tropical fruit.  We have a dwarf apple banana tree that I put in last spring.  Apple bananas grow all over here, I don't know if you can get them outside of Hawaii but they are very tasty.  

Here is the flower pod that will produce the bananas.  You can just barely see the baby bananas way up underneath the outer petals in the pic below.  

Not sure how long it takes the bunch to grow, but I'll have to keep a close eye on it.  Them I just need to wait for our papaya tree to get bigger and I'll have some fresh papayas too.  Gotta love Hawaii!