North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@bellsouth.net>]

On 10/17/2012 12:37 PM, John Barbowski wrote:
> In spite of 2-300 blossoms on each of my 4 foot plus Siberian pomegranates,
> (Kasake,Agat) and a very warm summer, I had only 5 blossoms set fruit, one
> of which, (1.5" diam) dropped off 2 weeks ago and only had about 6 immature
> white seeds. The remaining 4 fruits are developing nicely and starting to
> turn red. The largest is slightly larger than a tennis ball. Is there a
> trick to getting more fruit?. Two years ago I had seven Poms develop,
> anywhere between 2-4" in diam.
>
> I have never noticed pollinators buzzing the flowers. Would manual
> pollination help and  if so, should it be intra or inter species or does it
> matter?

Allow wild plants, weeds and wildflowers to flourish somewhere on your 
property. Bees, bumblebees and other pollinators will be attracted to 
them at various times during warm season. Perhaps this will help bring 
bees to your pomegranites. Bumblebees or carpenter bees pollinate my 
dwarf Meyer lemon. Wild honeybees are back now, absent since Spring, and 
are feeding on many wildflowers now in bloom, daisies in particular, 
goldenrod and many other plants.

Try altering the soil mix in your containers. I heartedly recommend
adding local quarry rock dust to your mixture (siltation pond fines, 
free for the hauling, usually). Other amendments include: dried chicken 
manure or cow manure, finished compost, greensand, azomite, seaweed 
meal/kelp meal, composted alfalfa or alfalfa meal, rock phosphate and 
other materials; granite duct from quarry fines would be excellent 
otherwise buy the bagged supplement mail order or locally.

Urine works well on Meyer lemon; maybe pomegranite too. Pruning is 
critical as well.

LL