Pomegranate Questions

General Fruit Growing
1

Hello everyone. I’ve been reading this forum for a while now and greatly appreciate all of the knowledge I have gained. I am in San Antonio, Zone 8b, and am learning a lot about our unique climate. We have 3 months of 100 degree temperatures with little rain and then cool and wet winters. Thankfully, we survived the deep freeze this year, and thanks to frost blankets and halogen lights that I put under them, all of my fruit trees survived and are doing well.

I have a question regarding my 3 year old Wonderful pomegranate. The tree has grown well, even in my heavy clay soil and has had an immense amount of blooms for the first time this year.

I realize that the answer to all of my questions may be “just wait another couple of years”, as I have read that pomegranates often do not bear fruit until years 4 or 5.

I found a few websites that have discussed the male and female flowers on pomegranate trees. Based on the photos I have seen and the photos I took of my tree, it seems like I have all male flowers. Is that correct? So far, I am not seeing any fruit developing. The flowers will bloom and then appear to rot and fall off the tree. Is this normal for this age of tree? Do I have a fungal problem or nutrient problem?

The tree is mulched, and this spring I put compost from my bin under the mulch and also fertilized with a balanced fertilizer. I am also wondering if one of my problems has to do with over watering. Unfortunately, as you can see, my pomegranate is surrounded by grass, and every time I turn the sprinklers on (at least once per week given our climate), the tree gets a lot of water.

Is there anything I should do differently? Or should I just give the tree another year or two?
Thanks!

image
image3024×4032 4.23 MB

2 Likes
2

image
image3024×4032 4.02 MB

1 Like
3

image
image3024×4032 3.21 MB

1 Like
4

And for fun, here is a photo of my avocado, which is bearing fruit for the first time this year.

image
image3024×4032 2.84 MB

3 Likes
5

This does not look like a Wonderful flower to me, Wonderful has simple flowers, the one on the photo looks like an ornamental variety selected for the flowers, not for the fruit.

3 Likes
6

Agree, thats definitely not Wonderful. You can see the ornamental flowers and fruiting male/female “simple” flowers here

The latter is what the Wonderful cultivar’s flowers look like. Yours is very likely an ornamental variety

1 Like
7

Yeah unfortunately probably not a fruiting variety. I think there are varieties that do better in Texas like Austin and Texas pink

1 Like
8

Interesting. I had wondered about that possibility as well. Thank you all for the replies. It looks like I need to go speak with my local nursery where I bought it.

1 Like
9

You could cut it down and graft it to a fruiting type to take advantage of the established roots for quicker results.
What types of avacado you grow?

2 Likes
10

Grafting is not a bad idea. Thank you.

The avocado is either a Lila or a Joey. I bought one of each and cannot remember which this is.

1 Like
11

At least you can grow them easily. So many very cool pomegranates out there, explore your options.

I would like a good soft seeded type, that would be cool like Parfianka or whatever floats your boat.

3 Likes
12

A question I never knew I needed a good answer for was how to process a pomegranate fruit properly. This video shows it in a way that kind of blew my mind, so I figured I’d share for those who actually end up with ripe fruit!

2 Likes
13

By the way, the juice of some pomegranates is stainless. Eversweet and Soft Seeded Pink are examples.

3 Likes
14

Hi All - I have a 6-7ft tall pomegranate in the ground - it’s a Wonderful pomegranate. It was grown as a single trunk unfortunately. I wanted to graft it with a few interesting varieties I have scions for already but the tree has alresdy leafed out and has bright red flower buds on it. Is it too late to graft? Should I try anyways?

I do see a very low branch sprouting finally - about 2-3 inches off the ground but still from the main trunk - so I’m excited to slowly convert this tree back into a multi trunk tree if that’s even possible. I don’t see any suckers straight from the ground yet. It’s been in the ground since May 2023. We got some fruit on it last year but 90% of the fruit got eaten by squirrels or maybe rats.

I wanted to graft these Scions:
Eversweet,
Parafianka,
Ariana,
Gissarskii Rozovyi,
Sirenevyi
Vkusnyi

Though given the number of scions, I’m wondering if it’s smarter to get another multi trunk bush and graft onto that instead and grow it in a pot. If it grows well, at least I can try various cultivars to see what I want to convert the Wonderful to.

15

You want to graft while it’s growing. Usually you graft when sap is at its strongest flow some exceptions.

1 Like
16

Perfect. Thanks! I haven’t heard/read too much about grafting Poms so I wasn’t sure if there was something different to be aware of. I’ll try today.

1 Like
17

Pom have thin bark. So, bark graft would be idea. If using a different method, then make a long cut so that there is more contact. Most of the time, I root them from a cutting. There is one cutting that have 2 flower buds and it don’t have that much root yet. The cutting was taken in Fall and it leaf out in Spring with flower buds.

Have fun grafting. Hope you success.

1 Like
19

Thank you!

I am also considering rooting some of the scions I have - just as backup.

When you root cuttings, how long does it take from rooting to flowering/fruiting?

20

That depend on which part of the tree you cut. If you cut part of the branch that is able to flower, then you likely get flower or fruit the next year. If you cut a younger branch, then may be 2 or 3 years.

1 Like
21

That is definitely not a wonderful pomegranate, as you have already been told, that it’s just most likely an ornamental variety, some ornamental varieties can produce yet that is rare, and if so the fruit are usually too small and/or too inedible to be worth trying to grow for fruit.

There is one variety of ornamental pomegranate that produces great fruit that I know of, and I have it, although so far the fruiting flowers have all aborted, and have been very few, that variety you have is definitely not what I have. Although all of my pomegranate bushes have been low production, even if one of my pomegranate bushes has well over 100 flowers on it, most of the female flowers abort. I do suspect that this is caused by a nutrient deficiency, of Boron, and maybe of something else as well. I will figure it out eventually.

Male flowers are basically fruiting flowers that are highly underdeveloped, their female parts don’t develop properly, if at all, then there is the intermediate flowers that start developing the female flower parts to the point that it’s noticeable, and if those flowers abort before they turn in to fruit, then they are called intermediate flowers, although technically they enter the intermediate flower stage whether they develop in to fruit or not.

I believe that not only can a nutrient deficiency abort the intermediate flowers, that they can prevent male flowers from developing in to intermediate flowers in the first place, and that a deficiency can even prevent flowers from forming in the first place.

That is not a small mix up, almost nothing like wonderful. Either a cutting collected from the wrong bush was propagated with the wrong tag , or what might have happened is that you might have bought a seedling grown from a wonderful fruit’s seed, there is always a chance that a seedling of any variety could be totally male flowered, usually a tiny chance, yet still happens. A lot of nurseries sell seedlings. Then there are the nurseries that appear to do very little to verify what they have, and to complicate things a lot of nurseries do not propagate them selves, someone else does it for them, they are just resellers.

So what has happened, I can see that this is an old thread now?