Te Puke has its kiwifruit. Ohakune, the giant carrot. Given the extent to which I’ve droned on and on and on and on about it this year, you’d barely bat an eyelid if you were to pull up at my place sometime soon, only to discover I’d erected an ostentatious 7-metre high fibreglass pomegranate in my front yard. It’s been a journey for all of us, this pomegranate. Truth be told, when my mates bought me a pomegranate shrub as a housewarming gift three years ago, I didn’t really ex...
Te Puke has its kiwifruit. Ohakune, the giant carrot.
Given the extent to which I’ve droned on and on and on and on about it this year, you’d barely bat an eyelid if you were to pull up at my place sometime soon, only to discover I’d erected an ostentatious 7-metre high fibreglass pomegranate in my front yard.
It’s been a journey for all of us, this pomegranate.
Truth be told, when my mates bought me a pomegranate shrub as a housewarming gift three years ago, I didn’t really expect it would ever have fruit. I’m not a very handy gardener. The soil at my place is the gluggiest clay. And besides, I’ve never seen a fruiting pomegranate tree in my life, let alone in New Zealand.
But the pomegranate didn’t just take. It flowered in its first summer. And the next. Just one or two bright-red, delicate, pear-shaped little flowers at the end of its spindly branches. It grew taller, more confident and established. And when my wife asked that I move the tree to make way for a new gate, I waited until late Autumn to give it the best chance of surviving, carefully dug up its root ball and found a spot in the northern-most corner of our property.
I thought that’d be it. The move would put it back for a few years. But I returned from a week away over summer and could barely suppress my delight. The pomegranate had flowered and the flower had been pollinated. Like a green little tomato perched right at the very top of the tree, my pomegranate had its first fruit.
Since then, it has been a fastidious operation. Every Monday morning, I’ve fed my plant a combination of citrus fertiliser and worm juice. I’ve fought off ants and other insects whom I worried might be burrowing in and ransacking its lustrous little pearls.
As summer has passed and the single fruit has grown weightier, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the structural stability of the whole affair. Imagine an orange hanging off one of the weaker parts of a Christmas tree. It felt almost like it might snap off. With the help of our nine-year-old, I took some twine and jerry-rigged a make-shift support. The pomegranate kept growing.
Having the nine-year-old involved has been a big part of my fun. After all, the reason my friends bought us a pomegranate shrub and not a feijoa or a lemon tree is that my wife is Persian. Pomegranates originate on the Iranian plateau. As much as molasses might be a staple in Ottolenghi recipes, pomegranates will have been a treasured fruit for generations of our children’s ancestors.
As our single red globe has grown larger over the last few months, the nine-year-old has begun touring visiting friends and family through the northern corner of our property. Here is the basil. Here is the spinach. Here is our family’s pomegranate.
Outside of the kids’ ancestry and the exoticism of its origin, the simplest justification for our pomegranate obsession is that gardening is fun. Or if not fun, relaxing. I’ve really come to savour it. Even if I’m just weeding or cleaning up dead leaves and scraps, I find if surprisingly nourishing to go outside, chuck on a podcast, and potter about with my hands in the dirt.
One thing I’ve learnt though is it’s hard to know when to pick a pomegranate. There are YouTube clips and various online explainers, but colour isn’t the only indicator. Shape is even more important. Boxy is good. You can flick it and try to judge the sound. Several listeners have emailed me to warn that although pomegranate plants at their places did manage to grow fruit, the fruit never fully ripened. They couldn’t get it sweet.
On Monday I finally pulled the trigger. One swift cut, through the stem. The family gathered around the dining table for the moment of truth.
I sliced through the membrane and oxblood-coloured juice spilled out over the bench. I pulled apart the fruit and scooped the little rubies into a bowl. Together we each took a spoonful.
“Whatever this tastes like,” I said.
“I don’t think we’ve yet got a commercially viable crop.”
We drew the spoons to our lips. It was tart. It was tangy. It was sweet. It was delicious.
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