Smooth Cayenne Pineapple

Ananas comosus 'Smooth Cayenne'

fruit

Smooth Cayenne is the pineapple that built the Hawaii pineapple industry - the standard commercial and home variety across the Islands and the type behind generations of canned and fresh Dole and Del Monte fruit. Its leaves are nearly spineless (smooth-edged), which makes the plant easy to handle, and it bears a cylindrical 5 to 6 lb fruit with pale-yellow to golden flesh that is high in both sugar and acid, giving the bright, tangy-sweet pineapple flavor most people picture. It was bred and selected for productivity and for shipping and canning, but it grows just as well in a home garden and is a dependable, vigorous performer in full sun. Like all pineapples it is a perennial bromeliad: one main fruit per stalk, then ratoon crops from the suckers that follow.

✅ Plant alongside

Good neighbors that attract beneficial insects or deter pests

• Marigold — French marigolds help suppress the root-knot and reniform nematodes that are a leading pineapple pest, useful as an interplant or a pre-plant cover crop
• Sweet Potato — A low sprawling groundcover that shades bare soil between the widely spaced pineapples while sharing the same warm, well-drained beds
• Cowpea — A legume cover crop grown between rows fixes nitrogen and protects the soil until the pineapple planting fills in

🛡️ Pest & disease prevention

Proactive ways to stop trouble before it starts — tap a name with an arrow for its full guide

• Mealybugs →

  The main pineapple pest, often tended by ants that also spread mealybug wilt - control ants, start with clean planting material, and remove badly infested plants

• Scale →

  Inspect leaves and crowns and treat with horticultural oil, removing heavily encrusted leaves

• Nematodes →

  Root-knot and reniform nematodes stunt plants in sandy soil - add organic matter, interplant marigolds, rotate beds, and plant only clean tops

• Root and heart rot →

  Phytophthora and Pythium rots strike in wet ground - plant in raised, sharply drained beds and never let the crown sit waterlogged

🌾 Harvest & storage

A pineapple is ready about 18 to 24 months after planting (sometimes up to 30 months from a grocery-top crown). Each plant makes one main fruit on a tall stalk, ripe when the shell turns from green toward gold from the bottom up, the fruit smells sweet and fragrant, and the flesh gives slightly. Cut it with a short piece of stalk attached. Pineapple does not get sweeter after picking, so harvest at full color. After the main fruit, basal suckers (ratoons) grow on to bear a second crop, and the crown, slips, and suckers can all be replanted to start new plants - let cut tops dry about a week first. To coax a stubborn mature plant into bloom, seal it for a few days with a ripe apple, whose natural ethylene gas triggers flowering.

🥗 Nutrition & benefits

About 50 calories per 100 g with 1.4 g fiber, roughly 48 mg vitamin C (more than half a day of vitamin C), 109 mg potassium, and a standout amount of manganese (around 75 percent of the Daily Value in a single cup). Fresh pineapple also contains bromelain, a group of protein-digesting enzymes concentrated in the stem and core. The high sugar-and-acid balance of Smooth Cayenne makes it excellent fresh, juiced, grilled, or canned.