Pomegranates are doing fine so far. This my second try of Pomegranates in my yard. Previously I grown a few hardy varieties, they survived the winters fine, but 3 years ago they all died suddenly. I suspect it was a disease spread that year because I saw a 10+ year pomegranate tree in my neighbor’s yard also died. Very sad.
this time I added many varieties to see which ones will actually survive. Texas red, Parfianka, Surh Anor etc. Texas Red is growing very vigorously here.
I also added two varieties not rated for my zone 7.
Wonderful and Granada. Granada did not work, but surprisingly Wonderful lived through the past winter. Keep my fingers crossed.
I have 8 mascadines here.
Black Beauty
Darlene
Pam
Ison (removed)
Supreme
Triumph
Sweet Jenny
Sugargate
They are very easy to grow . In fact they grew so big that I can’t handle them any more. I will have to reduce them to 3 varieties.
I like Black Beauty taste best, but they ripens too late, almost won’t fully ripen. That’s a shame.
Triumph is my #2 taste wise, along with Sweet Jenny. They both have a very good after taste I like.
Ison tastes too sour to me and I removed it.
The after tastes are like 巨峰 Huge Peak variety from China. I ate a lot of them when I was in China a few weeks ago. Unbelievable taste. They are $2.7/lb from the supermarket.
But grapes are not doing well here. They got diseases and die easily or just barely survive, otherwise I would find this Huge Peak variety and grow it here.
My 3 Brown Turkeys are pretty reliable annual producers (pictured). Since space is limited, I tried grafting Celeste, Olympian, Desert King, LSU Purple to my mature trees this Spring but were not successful. Fig grafting success rate is very low for me.
Previously I had Afganski, Salavastski and Nikita. Afganski and Nikita fruited and they did not suffer rot problem. Probably because I placed them to the southeast corner, the best location.
They both taste great, but similar to the store bought ones.
If still not successful after this second try, I will give up growing pomegranates in my yard. I hope a few of them will turn out great. Especially if the Wonderful can survive here, that would be awesome.
I saw Angel Red growing in Green Spring Gardens in VA. Maybe we can set up a time in the fall to go there together to see what they have now.
I haven’t tried grafting figs. Maybe I should give it try next Spring.
But a problem that I can foresee is that many branches above ground can die easily during the winter. This happened to my figs several times. Luckily the roots will survive, so they can sprout out again. After a few years, the roots can establish them, then the branches above the ground will get bigger and won’t die. But the young branches can still die. That’s what I see here at least. Now Hardy Chicago, Celeste, Olympian and VdB all went through this process, and I was able to train them in tree shapes instead of bushes.
The top fig held in your hand looks huge. Is it from your brown turkey too?
Yea, the breba fruits of my BT trees are usually very large, though they’re prone to splitting if there is a lot of rain when ripe. According to some member that I asked for help with identification, it’s probably CA Brown Turkey.
None of the leaves on my trees look like that. I guess I may just have the non-CA variety of Brown Turkey…or something else entirely. There are just too many fig cultivars to know for sure.
