Pomegranate Advice for a Total Fruity Newbie

Greetings:

I am a MAJOR fan of pomegranates. Every fall I end up spending an exhorbitant amount of money on them and eat them almost to the exclusion of everything else for a month. I even developed an interest in Mythology when I was a kid because of the story of Persephone.

A bit over a year ago, I bought a house and am now ready to start putting in some fruit trees. Naturally, the one that I absolutely have to have a few of is a Pomegranate.

It is my understanding that you can grow them from seeds (yay!) from the Wonderful brand that you can purchase in the stores. I'm pretty clear on how to get the seeds out, but that is where it all starts to fall down. So I am posting my questions for you in the hopes that you will be able to help me grow some of this wonderful fruit.

1) How do you prepare the seeds so that you can grow the trees? Do you just pop a few in some soil and water, or is there a trick to it so that you will get germination?

2) When do you plant the little plants? In the fall or the spring? When I was living in Maine, we planted pretty much everything in the Spring so that it would have time to root and start really growing the following year, but Houston is so very different than Maine, that I need to ask.

3) Around how many years will it take for a pomegranate tree to start producing fruit? I figure that I won't be able to harvest for a couple of years after that, but I was curious about how many years it should grow before I should expect to see anything other than the occasional flower.

Thank you, in advance, for any and all advice given.

I love them too! I never grew them but:

“The After-Dinner Gardening Book” by Richard W. Langer says you can sprout the seeds on moist cheesecloth in covered containers. You may get some mold. The seed cracks open in 4-6 weeks and sends out a taproot. You then rinse off and plant in potting soil with some humus and sand. Water and fertilize well. While the roots like fertilizer and moisture (but well drained), the plant prefers a hot, dry, sunny location.

Also see:

Texas Citrus and Subtropical Fruits
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/Citrus/pomegranate.htm

Purdue Univ. - Pomegranate
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/pomegranate.html

Good luck!

If you want to speed things up, soak the seeds for 12-24 hrs in half hydrogen peroxide and half water. Kills any mold on the outside and should speed up water entering the seed. Then just put the seeds in between a wetted folded over paper towel(coffee filter, cheese cloth) and stick in a plastic baggie in indirect sun light. Once they sprout transfer to a loose potting mix, 50% perlite or something like that.

I wouldn't fertilize until they have their fairly big. Couple sets of leaves.

Wonderful is just one variety.

There are many kinds with different tastes and even a white seeded (white arils and juice) one. While it is a great adventure to grow on from seed, if you can't get the seed from the other types, you must buy plants. One Green World and Raintree both sell young trees of multiple varieties. If it was me, I would buy some trees while working with the seeds as well. I've learned here in the cold north that plants produce fruit years earlier than those grown from my own seed. Also, once you have a tree, you can often propagate from cuttings if you want more.

Of course, if you want to try to create new varieties, seed is the only way to go. Keep in mind however that seed of Wonderful" does not produce "Wonderful" but "Seedling of Wonderful"

Wish I could grow them here. I do much the same thing when in season. I have 11 Wonderfuls in my kitchen now and just cleaned 3 others yesterday. Lucky you, who can grow kinds that I will never be able to see or taste, due to the climate. Don't miss out.

Propagating from cuttings is best done with pencil-sized cuttings taken in winter. Trees grown from cuttings will start to produce fruit in 3-5 years.

Good luck from yet another pomegranate lover!

Susan Mc

I would say cuttings are the easiest way to go. Plant will be true and it should be quicker to fruit. Problem there is you have to have access to a bush that you can take cuttings from.

Cuttings would probably be eaisest if I could find a bush to cut from. Unfortunately, like you pointed out, you have to find the bush.

I have about 100 seeds now, that I have gently removed the 'fruit' from, that are enjoying paper towels after the recommended bath. It was OK to take the fruit from them, right?

Yes

This should prove to be an interesting experiment then. Thank you!

Why don't you try to order some different varieties from ARS? It will only cost FedEx shipping and you may get a lot of different kinds. Ask Jeff what is good for your area. I put the website and info in this thread:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1031175/

I had a lot of pomegranate cuttings but am down to just a few. Plus I am out of postage money; I sent some to California and they came back 'return to sender' since they need quarantine certificates. That hurt- $9 of stupid tax to me out of my grocery budget. If you want to send me sase I can send you some this February when the person I got mine from said he takes his cuttings. His are ready to sell by October.

Cheers, Susan

This message was edited Nov 24, 2009 2:55 PM

Hmmm, I've been wanting to try and grow olives where I am and that web site may help very much. Rule of thumb is you can't grow olives anywhere near me but I would love to fool around with some cuttins from around the world. Something may work well here but just has been tried.

Zonkel: Thank you very much for the information. I am definitely going to see if they will send me some cuttings. This won't stop the seed experiment, but now it's going to be more of an experiment than anything.

This should prove fun!

Be sure an post your results, please! I bought a dwarf pom and it slept the first year, but the second year "crept" up to 5' tall! No signs of fruit, but I'm enjoying watching it.

If you want pomegranates to eat, the sooner the better, I'd sure say just go to the nursery and buy plants. The A&M site has varieties that are well-adapted to the area.

Besides ordering cuttings, you might lurk about some apartment complexes on the highway. No seriously. Pomegranates are being used more and more where a vegetative screen is required between residences and traffic. Something thriving locally is probably a better bet if you're going for fruit production, but ordering some different things to play with could be fun, too.

But, if you just like playing with seeds, go for it. I've found them super easy to grow. I put the seeds in little pots in the fall, and let them sprout on their own schedule in a sheltered location outside. Or plant them straight in the ground, if you can remember where you put them. Or do the scarify/germinate thing indoors over the winter. Everything seems to work, as far as I can tell. They'll probably have some blooms the next year, but it might be a couple more before they have fruit. (The blooms are lovely, too.)


Have fun! Let us know...

Well, I am very much into the seed playing, but in the long run, it will be the fruit I'm after. So I will be getting some trees for the front where the "official" area for them will be, but still will be playing with the seeds. There is something deeply satisfying about being able to grow stuff from seed. But I will definitely be taking everyones good advice into account. Maybe give seedlings to friends that just want patio plants or something. I'm more wondering if I can do it or not. *grin*

Again with the questions now: I have room for three good trees. I'm wondering if I should go for three different varieties or all one type. From my readings, it looks like all you need is bees when they start flowering and you should be good to go for just one tree. But I'm wondering if cross-pollination would be horrid. It doesn't look like it would, but I was wondering if anyone had any experience with planting poms near each other?

When I lived in Maine, my father planted what felt like a billion types of apple trees all over our land. Most of them took, too, so the bees were very, very happy in the spring. We never saw anything that would indicate that the cross pollination of the apples was bad (all the different types were delicious!), so I'm guessing that the poms would probably be the same way. Still, better to ask.

I know from growing gourds that the fruit of cross-pollinated varieties will still give true fruit -- it's if you grow new plants from THOSE seeds that things can get hinky. Same with poms?

I don't know if I made that clear. If an apple gourd, for example, gets pollinated by a nearby snake gourd, the gourds the apple gourd vine produces will be apple gourds. But if you take seeds from those second generation apple gourds, they will be more likely to produce something other than true apple gourds.

You should really purchase an Angel Red pom. They are new and have more juice than Wonderful poms but they are considered a soft seed variety so you can just split them open and eat them like an apple. No more shall you have to spit seeds out.
I would just hate to see you grow some seedlings for 5 years and get something that tastes like oatmeal. At least have one named variety in the mix.
You can get Angel Red pretty much anywhere on the internet. Daves garden lists two vendors already.

http://davesgarden.com/products/ps/go/181314/

I have about eight kinds of poms.I'm hoping they will be hardy.Wonderful to me is awful.

Angel Red sounds amazing - although I don't spit out the seeds. I find that the little bit of crunch is fun. However, it's the juice that makes the fruit happy, so that's a very cool idea.

How is Wonderful bad, though, if you don't mind my asking? I will admit that so far it is the only variety that I have eaten, but it seems sweet and tart and yummy.

Mine always is very sour and not very sweet.It might not be Wonderful but it came from a nursery with high ratings.

It makes good wine,though.

Oh, man. I never thought of that. Pom wine. Man that sounds awesome.

I didn't read all the messages about how to grow from seeds. I just wanted to say that if you really love pomegranates, first, you will get fruit at least 2 but maybe 4 years sooner if you go to a nursery and buy a "Wonderful" grafted tree. Perhaps they are rooted not grafted, I'm not sure about that, but the tag will say the cultivar is "Wonderful".

I absolutely agree that the seedlings will produce fruit that is likely to be much inferior to "Wonderful".

Good luck to you, I am sure they will grow well in Houston. Mine froze to death last winter (an 8 deg. night)

Paul

I have been to a few Home Depots, Lowes and nurseries in the last month and the one plant that has been marked down to clearance at all of them has been the Pom. I would call around and find a place that has them on discount and buy em. Three foot trees of Wonderful variety were six bucks at Lowes a few weeks ago. I think they were marked down from 19.99 which is still very reasonable.