New gardener with a pomegranate plant
TippRed86
Posts: 2
Hi everyone,
I'm new to gardening in this past year, and I've really been enjoying it. I've had a lot of success growing some Cayenne Pepper plants from seedlings, and I've branched out into other varieties of fruit and veg too - mostly indoors as houseplants. A couple of weeks back I bought a small pomegranate plant, which I would love to grow in a container as a multi-trunk tree. After browsing online, I came to the conclusion that you seem to have a very knowledgeable and active community here, so I'm hopeful I'll be able to get some good advice!
I bought the punica granatum plant when it was 10 inches tall, in a small 2 liter container. I immediately transferred it over to a larger 9 litre container with some multi-purpose compost, and since then I've been keeping it indoors by a large south-facing window, and moving it into sheltered locations outside when the weather is fine (not too often so far in this Irish summer!). It has already grown another couple of inches, so it seems to be doing alright. In this past week I've also bought a much larger outdoor container (approx 70-80 liters) and some John Innes No3 compost. I'll include below a few pictures both of the plant and the container.
I'm able to re-pot the plant again at any time, but I worried that I didn't want to do it again too soon and stress the roots. Would I be better leaving the plant in its current container until the winter now, or would it benefit from being transplanted at an earlier stage? Also, I was planning on placing a few large flat stones into the base for drainage, then adding the John Innes No3 and replanting. Is this likely to yield good results, or is there anything I should do differently? I saw in at least one article that pomegranates can benefit from mixing in a little sand too?
I'd also appreciate any advice about how to control and develop the plant's growth so that it ends up as a multi-trunk pomegranate tree. I've read a lot of articles online, and it seems like I'm supposed to eventually pick 3-6 suckers to retain and train together, but I've not been able to find clear advice on when to start this. Some articles seen to suggest leaving the plant alone completely for the first year, while others suggest that you should start pruning as soon as possible.
Thanks for reading, and I hope to be on here a lot as my interest in gardening continues to grow!
Posts
Look on line go to container-gardening-for-food.com that should help
Hate to dash your hopes, but I must say this: pomegrenates need really long hot summers to fruit well. Even in Italy they are mostly cultivated in the south of the country (you CAN get pomegrenates in the north of Italy but they are small stuff in comparison).
I don't see a pomgrenate coming to much in Ireland as a food plant, although it will probably become a beautiful ornamental shrub in time (it's not very fast growing).
Also, do you know if your plant is an actual pomgrenate or the dwarf version? The dwarf is cute as buttons but it will never grow taller than 60 cm or so.
Both big and dwarf pomegrenates can actually take quite some frost, if you take care of protecting the feet with heavy thick mulch.
But I think it will be a while before it can fill the tub
Would I be better off leaving the plant in it's current container (with the MPC for now) and being careful with the watering? Or is it worthwhile repotting it in a smaller container with the new loam based compost/soil (would the John innes no3 that I purchased fill that description?) that Phillippa recommends?
And yes, I do know for sure that my plant is a full sized pomegranate rather than a dwarf. I also have no delusions that this climate is going to be giving me incredible crops of fruit, but I'm looking forward to the challenge anyway and I'll be delighted with any fruit that I do end up getting
Thanks again!