Other Gardens

Pomegranates

Cindy got a call from a neighbor recently wanting some advice about her rose bushes, which she thought might have a fungus, so Cindy put on her Master Gardener name tag and went over to look at the plants.  It turned out that the neighbor's gardener had used a fungicide product on the plants, which were already stressed from lack of sufficient water, that hadn't done them any good.  As a precaution Cindy took specimens over to County Ag which eventually confirmed Cindy's opinion that it was not a fungus but the fungicide that did the damage.

So the neighbor gave Cindy some pomegranates.  Neither of us had ever had pomegranate seeds before, so it was a new experience for us.

My next door neighbor when I lived in northern California had a pomegranate tree (Punica granatum) and I used to watch the squirrels perform entertaining acrobatic acts to get the pomegranates.  One squirrel in particular would flip upside down and hang from the branch by his back feet while he ripped off hunks of pomegranate; then he would flip back up while he ate the seeds, repeating the process until he had stuffed his cheeks.

This article from the San Diego Edible Garden Society has more information on pomegranate varieties that do well in this area:  http://www.sdedible.org/pomegranate-trees.html.