One of our family's favorite treats is a pomegranate. Pomegranates are not the world's most well-know or cherished fruits, but they grow pretty easily in our area, so we've come to love them. Two years ago, the girls even gave Dave a pomegranate tree for Christmas. I took pictures through the seasons, so the following is the journey of baby tree to pomegranates on our plates:
When we gave Dave the tree, it looked like a twig in a pot. It was hard to imagine it growing big enough to even support its heavy fruit.
But it sure did! The tree is full now, reaching taller than our fence. Pomegranates are a fall and winter fruit, so the tree buds in the summer, which is when we first noticed these funny looking little bean-things. "Baby Pomegranates!" the girls liked to find and count.
The beans turned into these exotic-looking red flowers, blooming just a year and a half after we planted it.
By late summer, the beans and flowers had transformed into a fruit that we finally recognized as a pomegranate. They stayed green for a long time. Some grew in bunches like this, some grew individually. Our tree will give us 9 pomegranates in this first year of fruiting.
The girls went out and picked some of the biggest and reddest pomegranates today. Unlike our peaches which fall right off when ripe, the pomegranates had to be really twisted and wrestled with to pop off their branch.
The one we ate today had that perfectly zingy burst of juice in each of its seeds. Pomegranates are high in Vitamin A and C, folic acid and antioxidants. It is believed that making them a part of your diet can help prevent heart disease, certain cancers, diabetes, arthritis, even common colds. We're so pleased to have discovered such a unique and healthy fruit and just amazed that we could produce our own so easily!
1 comment:
That's definitely one thing I'd love to have someday -- a yard to grow my own fruits and vegetables! So lucky!
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