If you are like me you eagerly buy a pineapple sage plant in the spring, plant it in your herb garden or elsewhere and watch it grow. And grow it does. Pineapple Sage can reach a sizable plant in no time at all. Come late summer and you are looking for that tell tale smidge of red where the blooms will be. You know it doesn’t usually bloom until October or maybe late September but still you can’t help but keep checking. It can be disappointing – all that looking and seeing nothing but green. But I just discovered this summer how to fool your plant into thinking it is later in the year than it is.
From the original plant I purchased I took two cuttings. So pretty soon I had three plants to put somewhere. I put two plants in the herb garden but left one in a pot and replanted it in late summer into a larger pot. I kept that plant at the edge of a cherry tree where it got enough sun to grow well but not the amount it would have got in absolute full sun like the herb garden. Greensburg Garden Center has been participating in the Old Salem Farmers’ Market on Sunday Mornings this year. I gathered a few plants to take to sell the beginning of September, and was going to snatch up that pineapple sage in the container, but lo and behold there was red at the growing tips. Sitting in that limited amount of sun it had formed flower buds. Pineapple sage is a short-day bloomer like chrysanthemums. It will only set flower buds when the days are short enough. So that plant got to stay here and avoid the sale. And I’m getting a kick out of the beautiful bright racemes of red flowers on it while the plants in the herb garden have yet to show any red. – Sandy