When to Plant Pomegranate

Q. We are thinking of planting a pomegranate bush in our backyard. I suppose right now in the middle of summer is not a good time to plant. Would late September or early October be okay, or do we have to wait until Spring? Any other helpful hints on planting this type of bush?

Pomegranates grow well in hot, dry climates that have winter temperatures that don't fall below about 20° F (-7 C). Pomegranate can develop several disease problems that affect the quality of the fruit in humid climates. You start to see some winter damage to pomegranates starting around 20° F. Some varieties can handle colder temperatures in the winter than others.

A. Summer months, when it’s hot, is not the best time for planting anything except palm trees and Bermuda grass. Pomegranates will struggle after planting during the summer months. To attempt summer planting, you better have a very green thumb and lots of experience gardening in the desert.

Pomegranate flowers form on "current season wood". This means that the flowers form on the wood formed that year. This is why pomegranate doesn't start flowering until a little bit later in the season than peach or apricot trees. And pomegranates continue to flower through most of the summer.

            Wait until Fall, about mid Sept to mid Oct in southern Nevada. You will have more success during the Fall months and the plant will be happier. A disadvantage is that the selection of local plants is not as large as in the spring months. Probably the two most popular pomegranate varieties are the traditional Wonderful or the sweeter and soft seeded Utah Sweet variety. If you don’t see what you want, wait until spring.

The Ambrosia variety of pomegranate is one of the earliest varieties with it fully ripe and ready to pick in about September. Ambrosio generally forms fruit larger than this one.

The fruit inside, called arils, is about the same color as the outer skin or rind in Ambrosia. That might not be true in many varieties.

            If you must plant now, do it early in the morning and have the hole already dug and the soil used for planting amended with compost. Fill the hole with water the night before and let it drain overnight.

Maintain the old wood of pomegranate and the percentage of larger fruit will be higher. Some of the more popular varieties include Wonderful, Sweet, Eversweet, Grenada and Sharp's Velvet. A variety recently released in the United States called Parfianka is getting a lot of attention lately.

            When planting, soak the container in freshwater for about 30 minutes. Take it out of its container and immediately place it in the hole and start filling the hole with water. Add the amended soil to this slurry and let it flow around the plant roots.  Stake the plant to keep the roots from moving and water the entire planting hole thoroughly so it’s muddy. Water it again, just like that, the next day. Set the irrigation controller so that it waters not more often than every other day during the heat. 

My Pomegranate Tree Produced No Fruit

Q. I have had a pomegranate tree for five years. The first three years it had fruit, even the first year I planted it. Last year and this year it has had no fruit. Can you tell me what to do for it? I prune and fertilize it the same way every year.

A. Pomegranates flower on the growth produced the same year the fruit is produced. In other words, unlike many other fruit trees, it flowers and produces fruit on new growth.

Pomegranate flowers

            It is very important to prune pomegranate before it begins to flower and avoid pruning during its growth. Pomegranate flowers and produces the best fruit on new growth coming from older wood.

            Some varieties of pomegranates, like yours, produce fruit when the tree is very young. Other pomegranates produce fruit after they get a bit older. As an experiment I would try not pruning at all this coming year and see what happens.

When pruning pomegranate leave four or five main stems at the base and remove all other sucker growth. The best pomegranates will be produced from this older wood.

            Another possibility could be the presence of some pretty nasty bugs such as the leaf footed plant bugs. You say your tree had no fruit but you did not say whether it produced flowers or not. If it produced flowers but no fruit than it is very likely the leaf footed plant bug was hard at work on your tree.

            If you have broadleaf evergreen trees such as bottlebrush (not pines), spray these trees during the winter months for leaf footed plant bug. These insects hide and feed during the winter months on trees that are evergreen or keep their leaves during the winter.

Bottlebrush in the winter with its very different looking seed capsules resulting from the flowers.

            These insects will be in full force when your pomegranate begins to produce fruit. Their feeding can cause fruit to drop from the tree at a very early age.

Safer is insecticidal soap is one example of a commercially made soap product safe to apply on plants.

            Soap and water sprays will control them if it is sprayed directly on these critters. Soap and water will not work if the tree is sprayed and you hope they come in contact with it.   Chemical sprays that appear to work well against this insect include pyrethrin sprays and those that contain the conventional insecticide Sevin.

Get Ready for the Leaffooted Plant Bug Invasion

Q. What is the best attack for these pesty, scarey looking creatures.  We had them last year.  Haven't seen them yet this season.  Is there something to keep them away?

Expect Those Ugly Bugs on Pomegranate and Pistachios Now!

Q. We have a big pomegranate tree that has been doing great for a few years.  Last year we had an infestation of nasty, prehistoric looking large grey bugs on our pomegranate tree. What can I do to get rid of them?

Pomegranates Come in a Wide Range of Colors

Q. I planted a pomegranate tree two years ago and this year it produced six fruit. One was of decent size while the others are on the small side. When the large one split I picked it only to find the inside was light pink. The seeds were well developed but not the expected red color.

What can I do to improve the fruit on this tree? 

This is what we expect to see inside a pomegranate because we are used to seeing only Wonderful variety of pomegranate

A. The key question will be how sweet the fruit was. Some pomegranate varieties will have fruit where the insides, the arils, never develop a dark red color. Some of them can be quite pale and anemic-looking in color. 

This is Ambrosia pomegrante. The arils are pale, nearly white. This fruit is ripe and ready for picking. However, I was not very impressed with the taste of this variety when freshly picked. It improved alot if kept in cold storage for a couple of weeks. Harvested in September in southern Nevada. Still a variety I would not recommend for our climate.

            You would not expect this on a pomegranate variety such as Wonderful, which has dark red outer skin while the fruit inside, the arils, are also dark red. Because this type of pomegranate represents probably over 95% of all our pomegranates planted, everyone thinks a pomegranate has to be dark red on the outside and dark red on the inside.

            This is not true. There are several varieties of pomegranate which do not. Pomegranate rind or skin can vary in color from lemon yellow through all shades of pink and red all the way to purple. The insides can be nearly white to dark red or even purplish red. The key to whether they are ripe is the taste.

This basket of pomegrantes will give you an idea of the wide range of colors that pomegrantes can come in. (Picture from Acta Horticulturae, publication of ISHS).

            If you have one of these varieties which are not red, you will never get dark red on the inside or the outside no matter what you do. A good example is a fairly common variety that we call locally Utah Sweet. You will find quite a few of these growing in the Las Vegas Valley.

           

            When a pomegranate is ready for harvesting the insides will become sweet tasting. The amount of "pucker" or tanins or bitterness will vary as well from extremely “pucker” to very sweet with very little “puckery” flavor depending on the variety. But the key to when it is ready is how sweet it is, not necessarily colors.

Here is a pomegranate I found for sale in a village in northeast Tajikistan. Very unique. Yellow on the outside with very beautiful dark red arils on the inside and very tasty.

            If your variety of pomegranate is the darker red type, just wait longer and leave it on the tree. If it is a variety that will never turn dark red, then look for the fruit splitting and begin to start sampling for sweetness.

            Depending on the variety, pomegranates begin to ripen in September and can last well into November. Wonderful pomegranate, the most common variety in the Valley, is usually ready right around Halloween.

Growing Fruit Trees in Containers and Transplanting Into the Ground

Q. I would like to plant some trees in containers until I can plant them in my yard in a few years. Can they stay in containers if I'm careful with them?  I'm thinking about apricot, pluot, orange and maybe a pomegranate.

A. If you have purchased these in containers you will probably not want to keep them in the same container more than perhaps that single growing season if you plan to plant them in the yard. Generally speaking, if you plan to replant them then they should be moved into progressively larger containers or the roots will be permanently damaged. Eventually, the containers you'll need will have to be large, whiskey barrel-sized or larger.

15 year old Gold Kist apricot at the orchard with minor
pruning for size control

            Once these trees start to get bigger they will transplant into the yard with more and more difficulty. This just means they are more likely to suffer from transplant shock and recover from this shock more slowly when moved. I would recommend that if you want fruit trees in containers then keep them in the container permanently. When you are ready to plant in the yard then purchase trees specifically for the yard.

             Of the group you mention, citrus is probably the best choice for a container. Try to locate a citrus on a dwarfing type of trifoliate orange rootstock. Trifoliate orange rootstock is very cold tolerant which you will need in our climate unless you can protect the plant from freezing temperatures. There are a few selections of trifoliate orange rootstock that are more dwarfing than others. Focus on these if you can find them.

            My next choice for a container might be one of the smaller pomegranates like the variety ‘Sweet’ which would be a better choice for containers as opposed to ‘Wonderful’. The fruit is excellent, as good as or better than ‘Wonderful’.

Read about Sweet pomegranate at Dave Wilson Nursery

            If you select an apricot then I would pick one of the miniatures like ‘Pixie-Cot’ or a standard sized tree like ‘Gold Kist’ which tends to stay smaller when on Nemaguard rootstock at least.

Read about Pixie cot and Gold Kist at Dave Wilson Nursery

            Among the pluots for a container I would probably pick ‘Flavor King’ which stays naturally smaller than some of the other pluots but it will need a pollenizer tree such as ‘Santa Rosa’ plum.

Read about Flavor King pluot at Dave Wilson Nursery

            Don't expect these trees to be long-lived if you keep them in containers. I hope this helps.