The perfect pick
Royal Pom™ orchards undergo an incredible transformation during pomegranate trees' growing cycle when brightly coloured, showy blossoms signal the start of pomegranate season. Royal Pom™ pomegranates are harvested six to seven months after flowering.
Royal Pom™ pomegranates are ideally suited to the hot, dry, Mediterranean-style growing regions of the Lachlan Valley near Condobolin in central western New South Wales and near Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, where trees bear their first fruit between three and four years after planting.
Up to 600 pomegranates trees are planted per hectare with each tree yielding up to 25 delicious fruit. Relatively drought hardy, deciduous Royal Pom™ pomegranates are propagated by striking hardwood cuttings from the very healthiest trees.
Growing Royal Pom™ pomegranates is extremely labour intensive. Trees are planted on trellises, then pruned and trained every four weeks to maintain their shape and restrict their height to less than three metres. Untrained, pomegranate bushes grow into large trees.
To determine when Royal Pom™ pomegranates are ready to be harvested, pickers look for a perfectly rounded fruit, usually with a crimson-coloured skin, but often varying from shades of pink to a deep red. If the external appearance is as it should be, pickers carefully open a piece of fruit and study its internal characteristics - if one fruit on the tree is ready, all the fruit is ready and harvest begins.
Every pomegranate is snipped off the branch by hand. Pomegranates are precious - pickers wear gloves and handle them with care to avoid bruising the fruit's delicate skin.