Fruit & edible · North Texas care guide
Punica granatum
Nursery Pro tip: Drought-tough shrub with flame-orange blooms and fall fruit. Wonderful is the standard.
Brilliant orange-red flowers in spring, glossy leaves all summer, yellow fall color and leathery red fruit in September — and it's essentially drought-proof. 8–12 ft as a large shrub or small multi-trunk tree. Fruiting varieties like 'Wonderful' need our hot summers, which they get.
Full sun and heat, in well-drained soil. Alkaline soil is fine. The hot dry bed along a south wall is ideal. Space 10 ft apart; it's self-fertile, so one plant fruits.
Spring. Wide hole, ball at grade, native soil with expanded shale in heavy clay, Root Stimulator, mulch.
Weekly the first two summers, then every week or two. For good fruit, keep water even while it's sizing — erratic water splits the fruit.
A light spring feeding. It fruits better lean than rich.
Late winter. Choose three to five trunks and remove the rest, and cut out the suckers that come up every year. Fruit forms on new growth from mature wood, so light annual thinning beats hard shearing.
Fruit splitting from uneven water. Leaf-footed bugs on the fruit in late summer. A severe freeze can damage top growth; it regrows. Ornamental (double-flowered) varieties are beautiful but set little or no fruit — check which one you're buying.
Hot sunny beds with vitex, Texas sage, rosemary and lantana; an ornamental hedge that happens to feed you.
Written for Rockwall's black clay, heat and winters by the Landscape Source team. Every yard is different — bring a photo by, or ask LS-Ai, and we'll tailor it to your spot.