Pomegranate Year: What to Do Season by Season

The shape of the year

A pomegranate is deciduous and its year is unusually clearly divided. It sits bare and needs nothing all winter, breaks late in spring, flowers over a long stretch of early to midsummer, spends the whole of late summer and autumn slowly filling and sweetening fruit, then drops its leaves and stops. Almost all of the work is concentrated into two short windows: late winter for pruning, and early summer for suckering and thinning.

The critical stretch is the last six to eight weeks before harvest. That is when heat drives sugar into the arils, when uneven water causes splitting, and when an early wet autumn quietly ends the season. Nothing you do in spring can compensate for that period going wrong, which is why the whole of the earlier year is really about arriving at it with an open, unfed, evenly watered tree carrying a sensible number of fruit.

Late winter: the only pruning window

With the bush bare you can see the framework, so this is when structure gets decided. Remove dead, crossing and inward wood, take out one or two congested branches at the base, and cut off every woody sucker that escaped during the season, flush with the ground. Do not head back the shoot tips, because the fruiting spurs are there.

This is also the planting window. A dormant tree planted now roots into warming soil and establishes before the first summer, whereas an autumn-planted one sits in cold wet soil for months. If a hard winter has killed a trunk on a multi-stem bush, cut it out now at the base and mark one strong basal sucker to become its replacement.

Spring into early summer: set the rhythm you will keep

Bud break is late compared with most fruit, so do not panic at a bare pomegranate when everything else is in leaf. Once growth starts, begin deep soaking on a fixed interval, roughly every ten to fourteen days at first, moving to every seven to ten days as the heat builds. The exact interval matters less than keeping the same interval, because it is the variation that splits fruit later.

Feed at most one light handful of a balanced granular fertilizer now, and nothing after that. Mulch three to four inches (8 to 10 cm) deep over the root zone but keep it clear of the trunks. Do the first sucker pass as soon as the base greens up, rubbing off soft shoots with your thumb. When flowering begins, look closely at the flowers: single with a swollen vase behind the petals means fruit is possible, a many-petalled rosette means it is not.

1. Start the watering interval and write it down Pick an interval you can actually keep for four months and record the date of each soak. A written rhythm is far more reliable than intending to water when the tree looks dry.
2. Mulch before the heat Three to four inches (8 to 10 cm) of bark, straw or gravel over the root zone, pulled back from the trunk. This buffers the soil moisture swings that cause splitting in autumn.
3. First sucker pass Rub off every green shoot at the base that is not a chosen trunk, while they are under six inches (15 cm) and snap cleanly. Ten minutes now saves an hour with loppers next winter.
4. Check the flower type Confirm the flowers are single with a vase-shaped ovary behind the petals. If they are doubles, you have an ornamental form and no amount of care will produce fruit.

Midsummer to early autumn: hold steady and thin

Fallen flowers under the tree in midsummer are normal; many of them are male-function flowers that were never going to set. What matters is the fruitlets that swell. Once they reach walnut size, thin each cluster to a single best fruit and aim for roughly six inches (15 cm) between fruit along a branch, so nothing touches and air moves between them.

Through late summer the job is discipline rather than activity. Keep the watering interval exactly as it was. Do not feed. Prop or tie branches that are bending under load before they split at the crotch or lower fruit onto the mulch. Retain enough leaf cover to shade the fruit from the worst afternoon sun, because scalded patches rot. As coloring starts, take one fruit as a test and taste it rather than guessing from the outside.

Record the date of first flower, the date you thinned, and the date and verdict of each test fruit. Within two seasons this gives you your own ripening window, which is the single most useful thing to know about your particular tree.

Harvest and shutting down

Pick once the fruit is angular rather than round, matt rather than glossy, heavy for its size, and rings when tapped. Cut with pruners leaving a short stem stub; never pull. Bring the harvest forward if heavy rain is forecast and the fruit is close, because a split fruit is a total loss while a slightly early one is merely less sweet. Remember there is no ripening after picking, so when in doubt on a settled forecast, wait.

After the leaves drop, rake up fallen leaves and any mummified or rotten fruit and remove them rather than composting, since they carry over leaf spot and fruit rot to next year. Stop watering entirely for the winter unless you are in a genuinely rainless region, because wet dormant soil around the crown is the main way established pomegranates die. Store sound fruit cool at around 40 to 45F (5 to 7C), where they will hold for two to five months.