Yukon man grows pineapple at home — and it only took 9 years

Alex Oberg is not the first person to grow a pineapple in the North, but he may well be the most dedicated.

It took nine years, from when he first adopted the leafy pineapple crown that some friends had rooted in water, until he was finally able to bite into a golden, homegrown fruit.

“If you’re patient, then good things will come to you,” Oberg said.

The project could be described as a labour of love, but the way Oberg describes it there wasn’t much labour involved. Once the rooting crown was planted in some soil, time — and a south-facing window — did most of the work.

“It just kind of sat in a sunny location in the house, and you just maintain it the same way any other house plant would be maintained — kind of forget about if for a couple of weeks and then maybe remember to water it,” he said.

“Eventually we thought, ‘well this thing should at some point be growing a pineapple for us, right?'”

He says that’s when they moved the growing plant outside to a greenhouse for the summer, hoping to see it fruit. Nothing happened though, so the plant came back inside.

More fruitless years passed. But the plant, once a nice little splash of green in the house, kept growing, eventually becoming “somewhat unpleasant,” Oberg said. Some of the long, sword-like leaves reached as high as Oberg’s head.

“They’re kind of poke-y and stabby. So you have to be really careful not to get poked in the eyes as you’re watering it,” he said. “Hazardous to your eyes, for sure.”

Then, last fall, it appeared — a little miniature pineapple, sprouting from the leaves.

“Pretty exciting,” Oberg recalled.

Months later, the fruit had grown and taken on a golden-yellow hue. It smelled like a pineapple. Oberg picked the fruit, cut it open and had a bite.

“Well, it tasted like a pineapple. Pretty sweet, maybe a little bit on the sour side,” he said.

“We maybe could have waited a little bit longer.”

Pineapples are native to South America and the plants typically thrive in sunshine, warmth and humidity — things the Yukon is not especially known for.

Paul Zammit, a professor of horticulture at Ontario’s Niagara College and a gardening columnist on CBC Radio, says he’s grown a pineapple plant himself, in Ontario, but didn’t keep it long enough to see it fruit. That can usually take anywhere from 18 months to two years “under ideal conditions,” he said.

He calls Oberg’s pineapple, grown over nine years in the North, “a nice surprise.”

“I think it’s fantastic that there is that level of commitment because they are not, I would say, the easiest to grow,” he said.

“We don’t exactly have the conditions that favour their growth.”

Oberg is not the only Yukoner to grow a pineapple at home. A few years ago, a man in Dawson City — even further north than Whitehorse — grew a couple of hefty pineapples in his off-grid cabin, though it didn’t take him nine years.

Oberg says he’s now saved the crown from his homegrown fruit to try and start a new plant. With any luck, he’ll have another fruit sometime before 2035.

“If you can put up with a kind of an unpleasant house plant for a few years, then it’s definitely worth it,” he said.