Sun City resident grows pineapple in home

Sun City resident Bob Begora began to worry about the pineapple top he had planted in a small pot two years ago, as he noted not much progress had occurred in its growth.

Having been a wholesale produce buyer for major hotel chains for over 30 years, Begora has had the opportunity to experience the whole pineapple lifecycle through his visits to plantations in Hawaii and always had the idea in his mind to grow a pineapple of his own.

“I knew all you do is take the top off a pineapple [and] put it in soil, which is what I did a few years ago. This spring, I found that you can force a pineapple to grow by giving it ethylene gas. Bananas and apples give off ethylene gas. So do tomatoes,” said Begora. “So, I put two to three apples on the base of the plant [and] covered it with plastic at night. It’s been two years. Usually, pineapples take about 18 months…I think I forced it too much because instead of one pineapple, now it looks like I got three growing on the same plant.”

According to Begora, his pineapple plant has now grown to be about four feet tall and three feet wide, which has forced him to move the plant into a bigger pot that he keeps on the floor by his patio door. He estimates that the biggest pineapple of the bunch only currently measures approximately five inches tall, but is continuing to grow.

While his pineapple plant is often at the center of conversations for guests that visit his home, Begora is no stranger to capturing the public’s attention with his agricultural abilities.

“I used to live in Marengo at the time. I had a farm with 400 apple trees. I used to grow 500-pound pumpkins. Three or four years in a row we got on Channel 7 news,” he said.

Begora remembers his first 500-pound pumpkin grew around the time of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, to which he jokingly told reporters was the reason for the unusually large size of his pumpkins.

The large pumpkins were sold for $1.25 a pound and were shipped to country clubs and restaurants all across the United States, said Begora.

Nowadays, Begora focuses his attention on growing tomatoes in his garden and maintaining his pineapple plant.

“I’m just amazed that I got three [pineapples] growing…What is amazing to me is one week when I was watering it, I told my wife, ‘Look at this. It’s opening up in the center for some reason.’ The leaves stopped growing and it kind of opened up and all of a sudden, we saw the top of a pineapple. I said, ‘That can’t be the pineapple because it’s supposed to flower.’ It’s a beautiful flower—the pineapple flower—but this didn’t flower. It just opened up,” said Begora, who had just been using a cotton swab to pollinate the flowers on the plant, despite those not resulting in producing pineapples.

Begora added that he has never placed his pineapple plant outdoors except for maybe a day or two last year due to his worry about unpredictable weather conditions harming the plant.

Begora says that his next project will involve growing an indoor Dwarf Meyer Lemon tree, which will hopefully produce Meyer lemons, fragrant thin-skinned fruits that are part lemon and part mandarin.

For those looking to grow a pineapple plant of their own, Begora suggests first using potting soil in a small pot.

“I think the pot I planted it in, just looking at it, is probably about eight inches high and maybe about six inches across. It doesn’t have to be very big. Don’t look to see if the roots are growing. I mean, if the [plant] starts getting bigger, the roots are taking hold and just keep it moist,” he explained. “You could fertilize it, but if you use a fresh bag of potting soil like Miracle-Gro potting soil, it’s got a three-month supply of fertilizer already in the soil, supposedly.”

He continued, “Then when it gets bigger, transplant it into a bigger pot. It’s got to be where the sun can get to it. You don’t want to have to move it into the sun all the time.”

If individuals don’t want to start growing a pineapple from scratch, Begora suggests visiting a plant nursery where they might have a pineapple plant already growing and waiting to produce a golden tropical fruit of its own.

---