Baby pineapple plant! What to do?

At last I have germinated a tiny pineapple plant on a piece of tissue paper! It is less than a centimetre tall but has a few leaves. I live in the UK so I'm certainly not putting it outside. What is the best course of action for it please? Sandy soil? Perlite? Lots of water? Little water? Only spray it with water? Humidity? Near the window or away? Please inform me of the best conditions, because it's certainly not optimal conditions living on a paper towel. :D

Also, will it be self fertile or will I need another pineapple plant to make fruit?

P.S, it is from a seed of an edible pineapple I bought in a supermarket.

Thanks very much.

 

jw - congratulations - there is something very satisfying doing that

You may be lucky and find someone here who has experience, but if you don't my approach would be to do a lot of Googling under the normal WEB heading and under GROUPS as well. These are a couple that I found :-
http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-pineapples.html#growing-pineapples-overview
http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/grapevine/growing-techniques/helly-re-pineapple-plants_13205.html

 

OK, I am not sure I will be able to answer your question fully.

But to give you some idea of conditions, I am actually growing (or trying) may be more apt to grow one in my garden, we have very high humidity, 90 degrees of heat, and the soil is well drained.

I suppose if you try to mimic those conditions in your home, you might get somewhere with it.

You can also grow them from the tops of the plant, take of the tops (leaves) leving a little of the fruit attached and plant in soil. It does work that's how we grow them here.

Don't know if this will be of any use to you, and someone with more experience may well come along.

Good luck, lets have some pictures.

 

Thank you for the replies so far. I've popped it in a little pot full of compost, perlite and grit so hopefully that'll drain enough. At the moment it's on my corridor windowsill, but after reading this I might move it into the lounge because it should be less likely to catch draughts there and it might receive more sunlight.

 

I've grown a few from tops and did once grow a plant from seed.

I think with the winter coming on the biggest problem is overwatering, very easy to do when its dark and dismal.

Full sun in winter but shade in summer seems to work, and just moist most of the time, dryer in winter.
Good luck as they require a fair amount of space and can be just slightly spikey.

 

Congrats on your baby!! I love growing things from pips and seeds, I grew a palm from a date stone but it got too big!! also planted the stone from a mango, WOW what a root system that has got!!!! :skp:

Val

 

Oh dear, it's not looking too good now. Maybe it is too cold even in the house? Its leaves are drying out and going brown and crispy from the outside in! :(