I have a spousal request to add a pomegranate to our yard next year, but this is a tree I’m not very familiar with growing. From a quick googling, it looks like there are plenty of cultivars that should be able to survive here, but we may not get enough summer heat for some (most?) of them to ripen good fruit.
Does anyone have experience with successfully growing pomegranates in the PNW, especially the Seattle/Puget lowlands area? Any cultivars to recommend?
The reason this came up was we spotted a tree in our neighborhood that is holding some fruit at the moment:
I do not know much about cold-hardy varieties, but look for the Russian varieties as those tend to be better able to withstand the cold. There are some excellent ones out there. Here are some sources:
I believe our issue here isn’t so much how cold it gets (we’re only USDA zone 8b), but rather how cool our summers are (average lows in the 50s, highs rarely above mid-70s other than occasional heat waves). Everything seems to indicate poms like heat, and lots of it, but that’s the one thing we lack!
Look into ‘Eversweet’, it might work for you - mine has not fruited for me yet so I can’t vouch for this, but it is supposedly good eating even when not able to fully ripen and is also reportedly somewhat cold hardy
I’m trialling the following cultivars in Arlington:
Red Angel,
Granada,
Hillsdale,
Sumbar,
Sverkhranniy,
Wonderful,
Haku-Botan
One of the challenges I’ve found is getting them sized up as mine wake up a bit late in the season and the wood doesn’t harden off enough for some of our frosts if we have early frosts. Granada was 6’ tall and died to the ground in mid teen temps near Thanksgiving. The others seem to be hardier so far. Haku-Botan is now the largest at about 5 ft but only a couple blooms so far. Most are 3-4 years old.
Thank you for this list! I hope you’ll update again when/if you get fruit from each of those. Hopefully at least one of them will produce good fruit here.
The temperature in winter isn’t going to be so much the issue as needing hot dry heat in summer. The pomegranate does well in Afghanistan, Persia, etc. If you have some south-facing area that dries out and bakes in the sun in summer that might be a good spot for it.
We have the dry part covered! Our dry season runs late June to early September, and it’s usually very dry (this year we got 0.11" total precip in that time). But I’m running out of south facing warm spots… gave all the best ones to hardy avocados! Maybe some of those will die and make room this winter, though.
Just want to follow up and ask if you have had some successfully ripened pomegranates. I bought a Wonderful and a Parfianka. But online sources say these won’t ripen here.
Where, exactly would it be ripening then? I’m in a similar situation- wife wants to grow pomegranate in the new high tunnel here in Vermont. Heat shouldn’t be an issue, though I’m not sure even the hardy types would manage the winter temps, especially since it swings wildly in there for much of the winter. Id shoot for a short season variety in any case. August/Sept. would be ideal, but not sure that’s doable considering it’d probably be April before it’d be growing.
A big problem is our fall rain. Pomegranates will split and rot in rain. They ripen in the fall in California. Will probably only ripen here in very late fall/ early winter.
One green world is said to have some success with several pomegranate varieties in the Portland area. Maybe their earliest ones will work here?
Did you ever get any pomegranates? I noticed they have a lot in stock at restoring Eden. I stopped in last week driving by. Have you ever been there in person? It’s a lovely shop.
I bet you did all ready, and also got a graft going off of that neighborhood tree. Ha
No, I decided to wait for reports of success by anyone else around here, and so far no one seems to have much luck getting them to ripen before they rot. I’ve kept an eye on the neighborhood tree and it does not appear to ripen.
I think I’m in a cold pocket. Although everything I’ve seen chart wise shows me being a solid zone 8b my lows since I have put them in has caused them to die back to the ground all but one year. I have a weather station at my house and here are the lows for each year. (2019, 7deg), (2020, 22deg), (2021, 7.8deg), (2022, 8.6deg).
I’ve been here since 2016 and I didn’t have the weather station in before 2019 but I don’t think I had the odd low temps the first 3 years. Don’t have the data to back it up though. All of this to say, mine have only survived the winter being cut down by the cold each year.
I have several Russian cold hardy cultivars but they all seem to equally be damaged minus Haku-Botan. It has done slightly better. Has a bit more established wood but is only 2-3’ tall. I know others are in warmer micro climates that I am.
Wow those are pretty cold! I’m in a cold pocket relative to the rest of West Seattle (a valley), but the proximity to the water helps a lot so even if I’m ~4°F colder than the rest of West Seattle, it’s still a lot warmer than you.
I didn’t have a weather station until 2021, but my lows for 2021 and 2022 were 16°F and 17°F, respectively. The local pomegranate tree in my first post is up near the top of a nearby hill, and probably a few degrees warmer than me.
I have a couple of rooted cuttings of parfianka that are about 4 years old. Completely neglected in 1 gallon pots. They survive our winters without any problems. They just won’t fruit.
Pomegranates actually love water. They have a reputation for “dry” because they are somewhat drought tolerant, but I’ve found they LOVE water. I have kept potted pomegranates sitting in trays of water nearly year round and found they grow much better than if simply watered.
You can consider most of the hardiness claims to be b.s. for our area. Half the varieties I’ve grown just a little south of you have proven inadequately cold hardy despite people claiming they are hardy elsewhere in the country. We are in a unique climate.
