Meeting the Pomegranate

Forty years of gardening should have taught me better than to assume that all pomegranates look like the big red ones we see in grocery stores this time of year. Pomegranates don’t grow in Kansas, of course, so my acquaintance with pomegranates has been limited to the commercial ones.

This is by way of explaining why I let the pomegranates on the tree outside my kitchen window almost go too far. I was waiting for them to turn ruby red. I kept waiting but the only evident color change was the tree’s leaves turning yellow.

I worried that the tree was sick, but learned that pomegranates are deciduous and drop their foliage even in the desert. Still I waited for the pomegranate fruit to turn red.

I waited until last weekend when Grant said, “Grandma, one of your pomegranates is splitting open. I think you’d better harvest.”

The splitting pomegranate easily came apart and indeed it was ripe and ready. The shells obviously never turned red, but are pinkish with green blotches.

I’ve learned a lot about pomegranate trees since then. There are at least eight varieties of pomegranates with softer seeds and five varieties that are juicier but have hard seeds. Their fruits vary from yellow through pinkish, to red. The hard-seeded kinds are used to make juice.

Unlike tree fruits I have known, the pomegranate fruit does not fall to the ground when it is over-ripe. It clings so tightly to its supporting branch that it ought to be cut off with pruning clippers to prevent damage to the tree. Instead of dropping, the fruit splits open to allow its seeds fall to the ground. Expert advice calls for judging the readiness of the fruit not by its color but by its size.

Pomegranates need full sun to do well. Our tree occupies a four-foot-wide space between a ten-foot wall and the wall of our casita. It gets no sun except for an hour in the morning. I won’t be expecting a big crop of pomegranates next year, but, by golly, if there are any at all I will know when and how to harvest them.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer.