Ha! OK... Well, I guess this one must have been one of those newer varieties. I lost the tags I made for them initially but one of them was Delmonte Gold? I have more plants of another variety which declined as a top in the 2nd year and produced 3 or 4 pups, of which 2 or 3 survived.
I've heard that about the offsets -- I really hope this one will produce babies for me to grow from. So far it just looks very sad. I cut the fruit from the very top of the stalk and left the stalk on the plant. I hope that was the right thing to do. -- give it extra potassium NOW? This will encourage it to grow the offsets?
Now that I know flowering will happen eventually even without extraordinary care as long as I give them space to overwinter, I'm just going to keep growing them. hehe I have mostly spineless varieties so they are not too difficult to find room for.
Before, I was ready to give up because they were not producing fruits in the "allotted" time usually given as how long it takes, but it appears to be just a matter of some kind of "growing days" -- I guess it takes longer because it's not ideal growing temperature here for at least 5 months of the year (assuming the other 2 months in the house in the fall and spring are comfortable enough)... unless of course this was a freak lucky accident...
