Aspiration

Cindy planted this dwarf Pomegranate tree in a pot in the middle of May and placed it on our front porch.  Thinking the big pot pretty much overshadowed the small plant, she named the plant "Aspiration", hoping it would eventually grow into its pot.

Planted in Mid May

Since then, the plant has flourished, doubling in size, and now it even has a couple of flowers.

Doing Fine Today

Since it's a dwarf variety it should probably grow to about three feet tall and three feet wide, but because it's in a pot, it might be a little smaller when it's fully grown.  It's supposed to thrive in hot, dry summers, which is definitely what it will get here.

We'll see if it's up to producing full-sized fruit someday.

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.