Gardencpa---It certainly was a beautiful day yesterday! I worked out in my yard all day until 6pm and enjoyed the low humidity. I spent a lot of time planting some more pineapple suckers so I will have even more fruits to share in the future. Your third picture of the white flower is butterfly ginger. It has an amazing fragrance which the picture of course can't show. I really like the canna in the second picture. If your plant is large enough to divide or if you have more, I would like to trade something if you are interested. Thanks for letting us view your pictures. I enjoyed them. Christine

Google has helped. Looks like tissue cultured plants is the best option for such a large number, but for how much it will cost ($0.50) I can build a tissue culture lab and grow the plants on site. My neighbor runs a not for profit that has built a mango packing plant in Sierra Leone to provide economic resources to the region. Unfortunately mangos only fruit two months of the year. The other large crop in the area is pineapple, but there is not enough plants in the continent to plant the scale of production they need. Land, farmers, facilities is not the lacking resources, it is availability of so many starter plants that is preventing ramped up production. As a Bioengineer, my neighbor asked me to look into ideas. Cheers, Werner J Stiegler

No problem. Those plants look very nice. Did you plant them out already? I made the mistake and waited two weeks before I planted out my last set and there was some rot. They all have survived thus far but I think they would have established faster not for the rot. Also, be careful when removing them from the test tubes. The first time I pulled on one and the leave popped off. Now I stick something down the tube to break up the agar before I pull on the plant. I think I might try tissue culturing myself one day. They sell tissue culture kits available online. Anyone in the forum ever try to micropropagate plants?

My wife Suzanne and I live in Naples, Florida (Zone 10b), with a climate similar to Hawaii, a paradise for pineapples. To grow them in our garden, I created a 60-foot-long raised bed with old wooden railroad ties. I filled it with southern Florida's nutrient-poor sandy soil, which I acquired by digging holes in our garden when I made large water lily ponds for our goldfish. The soil in the raised bed is very porous and lets the summer's excessive rain pass through quickly, because pineapples can't survive in constantly moist soil. We recently picked 38 large pineapples from this little "plantation," and are waiting for others to get big and ripe. We currently have 83 pineapple plants in the raised bed, after beginning with just five. We started those five by cutting the top inch or two off store-bought pineapples, including the crown of leaves, simply planting the tops directly in the sunny raised bed. Two years later each grew enough to produce a large fruit atop a short stem coming out of the center of the crown. Each plant will die after it fruits, but by then it would have already created a few baby plants next to it. By planting those babies we were eventually able to start our own pineapple plantation. Raising pineapples is just one of the topics taught in the free gardening classes in our Gardeners of Southwest Florida group. Other classes, often taught by professional horticulturists, cover a different gardening subject each time. The classes are given in the garden of a different group member every time, so that those who attend can learn about the class host's favorite plants and gardening techniques. Everything in the group is totally free: instant membership, informative classes, plant exchanges, light snacks, soft drinks, etc. We pay all the expenses ourselves to help Floridians become better gardeners. Over 1,300 families with gardens around Naples and Fort Myers are currents members of the group, and more are always welcome. Hundreds of photos and full details of the 123 past classes and upcoming classes are on the group's extensive website at www.meetup.com/FloridaGardeners. The two-hour classes are scheduled on weekends two or three times a month throughout the year. People who attend will benefit by meeting many of the friendly gardeners like the ones below, posing for a group photograph after attending a recent class in our garden's screened enclosure. At right: Peter Kacalanos and Suzanne Cherney, Gardeners of Southwest Florida group leaders