Update on my R26 (Afganski). It never got much bigger than a billiard ball, or maybe a tennis ball, so I left it on the bush as long as possible. It started snowing today, so I figured I should go ahead and pick it. It was tiny, but good! Tasted similar to a store-bought pomegranate, but more intense. It was more sweet than tart. Since this was it’s first year to flower/fruit (and it dropped most of its flowers/fruitlets this year), I’m hopeful that I’ll get more/bigger fruit next year. Fingers crossed!
FYI: This was planted in zone 7a, outside Philly, next to my garage, as a 12" twig in a 4" pot in 2021. So, I’m super pleased that I got even this tiny fruit! I wasn’t necessarily expecting anything at all, and just planted it for fun.
I’m puzzled, it seems a number of people have lost their plants to cold, and some of those seem to be in colder places than I. (I never get ripe fruit tho.) I’m a mile or two from 7B, but pretty sure it has gone down to five degrees since my pomegranate was planted, and it’s never appeared to struggle at all. It is planted against stone house wall (lots of thermal mass) facing S/SE. I don’t think I’ve watered it since first month or two. (Could that help fruit to mature?) No idea what variety. I get hundreds of glorious flowers, and some fruit sets, but it never seems to grow much. Cold never seems to phase it tho.
The sweetest I’ve harvested so far in western Oregon (Salem) is the cultivar Favorite. It isn’t that far off flavor wise from something you buy in the supermarket. They are also quite large, though the seeds are slightly harder than a super market pomegranate. The amount of juice in the Favorite is impressive, explodes all over the cutting board. I harvested these in early November, but I suspect they were ready by Halloween based on the sound when I tapped them.
I also have 4 other varieties that are supposed to be even earlier and better quality than the Favorote. If anyone want to trade cuttings this spring I am always looking for new varieties of pomegranates and citrus.
Here’s the list of pomegranates I currently have:
Favorite
sverkhranniy
Kara bala
sireneviy
kazake
I also have a dwarf pomegranate and a hoku botan that make sour fruit, but have pretty blooms!
I’m growing Sverkhranniy a few minutes west of Philadelphia (7b). It’s against a south facing wall.
I’ll probably take a cutting or two from it in a week in case it doesn’t make it through the Winter. I didn’t come across any real info on its cold hardiness. But it seemed like the only “maybe?” of the varieties that are supposed to be both sweet and soft seeded.
I bought it last fall from OGW in a ~1g pot, decided to baby it under a grow light all Winter (which was a pain in the ass) and then planted it out in the Spring. It has a single long branch that reached to about five feet. The majority of the plant’s mass is ~3 feet to ground level.
Sweet, soft seeded, cold hardy, and early. There is not really enough information about the soft seeded varieties to know if there is anything, that is all of those things. It would take trial and error to find out.
Last winter the entire region stayed below freezing for 48 hours, the temperature between 14 and 23 the entire time. It was the coldest week since the early 80’s. All pomegranates that I grow lived. A couple of them were slow to wake up the following spring. The dwarf had some branch dieback. That was the extent of any damage. What are known as the most cold hardy?
I had half a dozen varieties and that’s the only one left standing. Kazake was still going but I chopped it down as it would die back more frequently than Salavatski.
I got a couple awesome-tasting Salavatski’s this year, you could not ask for anything more in terms of flavor. The seeds are hard but I just spit them out after a lot of chewing.
It’s very hard to answer that question, because some of the most cold hardy varieties, they are very sensitive to late frost, so in some climates those varieties are way more cold hardy than in others. There has not been enough people growing enough varieties, in enough different climates to really answer that.
The people who have already answered your question have a very good answer, Salavatski is very hard to beat, and they appear to live in places with severe late frost, where Salavatski is very hard to beat for cold hardiness. I could write up a list of the most cold hardy ones for you, yet unless they are all grown side by side in a climate like yours, then there is no way to know which ones of the most cold hardy are the most cold hardy in a climate like yours.
