Farming: Pineapple and It benefits

Living with the nature is living abundantly, since the nature provides many kinds of things such as food, medicine, beauty, and fresh air. Not to mention the nutrients are possessed in each of that plants, or animals that we can take for food sources. Amazingly, the nature has provided us with tremendous amount of things we need to live our life. But most of them are still unknown or haven’t yet researched. Only a few of them we have known or even cultivated and developed. We need to learn more for the benefits of our natural resources for better use, and the most important is to encourage people to protect it willingly.

This yellow flesh of pineapple is not only delicious but also has a lot of health benefits

This time let’s talk about the yellow juice fruit calls Pineapple, a fruit with the leaves on the top that I call “The Crown”. The yellow edible juicy flesh which is mostly grown in tropical country like in my place Indonesia, is not something new. It is widely sold in the market both traditional and modern. We can see it in many forms as well, but the fresh one is always the best to take as long as you can find one. Last week, I walked around my farm and found out some pineapple's stems left aside and started to grow by itself. It crossed my mind that I could take it and grow it for regenerating it and to preserve the purity of the local variety of the pineapple. You may have difficulties to find the pure local Acehnese pineapple, which is very important to keep it and preserve for next generations (my own hobbies actually …LOL)

The Medical Benefit of the Pineapple.

But, since I actively involved in homesteading community and natural medicine community it has given me more attention to do and share something valuable world-wide base on my own experience. I felt my shoulder was rigid and got vomit for several times. I talked to my friend about that, and he suggested checking my blood, because it seems I had high bad cholesterol in my blood. That was one day 3 year ago, I started to aware that I had lots of bad cholesterol in my blood, I checked it in the clinic and the doctor said that my cholesterol was 248 mg/dL, but honestly I did not know what is supposed to be means. I came back to talk to that friend, and he suggested consuming pineapple after eating some specific food. Basically, there are many kinds of natural medicine can be used to overcome the cholesterol. Why pineapple?, What I have found in many kinds of medical and herb journals says pineapple rich of vitamin, enzyme and minerals. Two of them are C vit and Manganese which are the two components that help to break the amino acid and protein and produce energy and reduce the fat, and finally reduce the bad cholesterol, and the most important function of manganese is to decrease the glucose in the blood. And pineapple has special enzyme calls bromelain, and this enzyme helps our body because this enzyme work as anti-inflammatory. This fruit surely has many other benefits and posses a lot of good nutrients beside B1 Vit, B6 vit, and folate. Yes, it has sweet juicy taste of course, but be careful if you have specific allergic to this fruit.

The two pineapples I bought from the local market, to take the crown and to make my favorite juice

How to grow it

Talking about the benefit, some of you may have a question of “how I can grow it?”. Hereby would like to share how I grow this beautiful and tasty fruit. I have learned this way of growing this from my father long ago. We used to have our own pineapple “garden”.

1. Preparing the shoots before planting it to the ground. These are some method to prepare it, after selecting the good shoots

a. Take the young shoots from the old stem. I took those shoot from the stem that have been dumped away when the land was cleaned for planting papaya. So I collected some good shoots.

b. Take off some lower leaves for ensuring the roots have easy access to the soil, because it has roots under the leaves.

c. Dry it under the sun to ensure the mucus or liquid under the leave to dry before planting it to the ground.

2. Preparing the ground and holes

a. First step is clean the land from the weeds and other unnecessary grass
b. Make shallow holes on the ground, I use hoe to make the holes and the soil in the holes need to be plowed nicely to ensure the rood has enough oxygen at it first stage of growing.

The worm in the hole is the sign that the soil is perfect to plant anything. The soil must be plowed to the dirt.

c. Make sure the holes is not too close to avoid the leaves of it are twisted each other and the most important thing is to ensure easy access when we need to clean the weed. I made 1 meter space in between, because I need to take the shoots from it one day. The most ideal space between the hole is 60 cm.

d. Add some fertilizer into the holes, I used waste coffee powder that I collected from the coffee shop. That is excellent for fertilizer and I used it for many other plants including cherry tomatoes, papayas, cayenne pepper, and flowers as well. This is how the waste-coffee powder looks like. But, you need to remember that this waste-coffee powder must be left for a month before using it as the fertilizer.

This is the waste coffee powder that I used for fertilizer, I have left it for months in the sack for composting.

3. Planting it to the grounds

a. Planting the pineapple into the ground is an easy part but risky, pat good attention to the rooting part of the shoots.

b. Mix evenly the organic fertilizer with the soil to ensure the roots reach the soil faster.

c. Put it carefully into the holes, and press the fine soil to wrap the root of the stem, and then cover of the clean part (the part without leaves) with the soil.

d. Done

One thing to remember.

The pineapple can be grown from the “crown” at the top of the fresh pineapple. Because this crown has roots, the crown is the tuft of stiff leaves on the top of the fruits. I bought two of pineapples from the local market to take the crowns. It prices was not really expensive, which is IDR 20,000 / 2 pcs (about $1,3 USD). I have planted it to take the shoots when it grows older and ready to regenerate the best Pineapple by myself.

So, if you buy the pineapple please do not throw the crown away since you can use it to grow your own pineapples. Don’t worry about the land that you don’t have, you can grow pineapple in the pots and in plastic bag!.

The other benefit of the pineapple

Besides it possesses high nutrients, the pineapple has some other benefits. The eldest of my village once told me that long ago in the colonial era that our elder used the pineapple leaves for the yarns and finally made the clothes from it, or to saw the torn clothes. The method I took the yarns when I was a kid was by taking the leaves and smashed it carefully with the small wooden stick. When the fiber of yarn appears I took one by one and selected it carefully. I used the single yarn to make a bird trap by making the loop at one end and tie the other end on the small wooden stick and then nailed it into the ground. Indeed, I caught a lot of wild pigeons to eat by that way (I will share about making the traps in the survival post nest time).

I have two kinds of pineapple that I have planted a few days ago. One is the pure local pineapple and the other one is what it calls “Honey Pineapple” or in local name is “Nenas Madu”. The different between those two are the color of the leaves and the thorns. The local pineapple has a lot of thorns at both edges of the leaves are fully green. And the “Honey Pineapple” has no thorns and you can see the violet color in the middle of the leaves.

1. The Local Pineapple:

2. Honey Pineapple

Alright my fellow friends, this is how I live my life with the nature. I give one and then I will receive hundreds of benefit. It is time to return and relay to our mother nature for better life. Have a great day and happy farming. Thank you very much for reading my blog.