Most pomegranates aren’t adapted to my climate and aren’t cold hardy enough to survive here in zone 7b. They also bud out before the last frost and are severely susceptible to late freezes and frost damage which can kill back the plant that otherwise would have survived the winter.
I hope to select for cold hardiness, excellent flavor, high vigor, productiveness, late budding out, and disease and pest resistance.
I feel that maybe by selecting cold hardy pomegranates in my zone 7b and creating a lot of new varieties, that I can be of help to those trying to breed and grow them in zone 7a, zone 6 and maybe even beyond!, that they can use these higher cold hardy pomegranate seedlings to breed even higher cold tolerant pomegranates in their zones. It may be a dream, but I think it’s worth a shot!
The seeds I’m planting were from a delicious local pomegranate that was growing just a few miles from me. It was 10 times better than any one I’ve had from the store (no unpleasant bitterness or off flavor), so I saved every single seed from it, and had to have planted about 100 or more.
I’m super excited that it was so delicious, productive, and extremely cold hardy in my area, with what appeared to be zero cold damage from the winter and late cold weather, it produced at least 20 fruits (probably more) which I felt was a lot for being only about 8 feet tall and probably three years old.
They said they got it from a nursery but couldn’t remember the name of the variety. I meant to take a picture of it and thought I had, but I couldn’t find any. It was kind of a bland greyish peach colored on the outside with black dots (maybe some slight exterior fungus, but it didn’t affect the inside) if my memory serves me correctly. The arils (seeds) were a deep reddish pink and very attractive and delicious looking. The flavor was extremely delicious with sweet and flavorful being the main things that come to mind, but it also had a pleasant and well balanced slight tanginess to it.
Hoping that the seedlings turn out well!
