Pomegranates provide wonderful fruit for fresh eating, juices for drinking or making great jelly and an attractive ornamental summer bloom. We want our customers to be successful when receiving and planting the bareroot pomegranates.
Bareroot transplanting of these bushes and trees will be highly successful if you follow two simple rules: Prune them for survival (picture it like a dormant rose pruning) and control over-watering until in leaf.
Pomegranate Pruning Sketch - Prune like a Dormant Rose
Experienced nurseries have learned that they will have a nearly 100% success rate if the bareroot Pomegranates are pruned heavily when planted or they will have a high mortality rate if they don't. This is true whether you are in a dry climate or not.
Why? Most dormant trees do not need water when there are no leaves because internal moisture is not exchanged with the atmosphere without the leaves and photosynthesis. This is why trees can be dug and shipped bareroot when the leaves are gone. Usually the delicate feeder roots are re-established to take up moisture by the time new leaves form.
Certain trees and shrubs have very fine and delicate branching structures like the Elms, Zelkova and Pomegranates which will continue to give away moisture to the environment and these branches need to be removed to prevent dessication. Until the delicate feeder roots can re-grow, the tree cannot take up more water. Hard pruning gives the tree a chance to not desiccate while the new roots develop.
The new roots grow best in a soil media that is damp but not saturated with water.
The nice thing about Pomegranates, once the roots get re-established, it will re-grow rapidly. If you try to preserve too much of the original bushy top, the bush or tree will struggle at best or perish. Prune it hard and you will be satisfied with the results.
See our brief video: Pomegranate Pruning for Transplant Survival
Here are some printable .pdf pages for employee training:
Pomegranate Pruning Storyboard
