POMEGRANATES were once known as “the fruit of the dead”, but a Colignan couple’s crimson-coloured crop is poised to maintain its vital signs for many years to come.
Florist Paige Woods and agronomist Tristan Smith bought Karingal Gardens Pomegranates a few years ago, and have faced significant barriers in their first two harvests.
“Last year, we had a good growing season but a poor harvest season in terms of weather because there was a lot of rain, it was very wet over harvest,” Ms Woods said.
“Because we had lots of rain we did pick a lot of split fruit which obviously doesn’t fetch a very decent price at the market.
“This year has been a little bit harder, we did have quite a large percentage of our farm underwater from the floods.”
The Hewett Road property is seven acres, with five acres of plantings.
Three pomegranate varieties are grown at Karingal Farms, 95 per cent of them are the aptly named “wonderful pomegranate”.
“The wonderful is a really easy-eating pomegranate, it’s quite sweet with a little bit of tartness, and the fruit is just a really nice smooth, round, typical pomegranate shape,” Ms Woods said.
She said they’d lost “a couple of decent acres” of fruit this year because the trees were underwater, but what remains has been really high quality.
“Because we haven’t had heaps of rain during harvest yet, we haven’t had to pick a lot of split fruit,” Ms Woods said.
“Everything looks really good, it hasn’t been as windy since the fruit’s been growing so the clarity of the fruit’s really good, the size issue is also really good.”
Finding workers has also been easier this year.
In 2022 they had a lot of contract workers, this year they’ve been fortunate enough to be able to direct employ their staff.
“They are all on their holiday working visa, so they’ve just got to complete their 88 days,” Ms Woods said.
“They’ll do about six weeks with us, and then move on to somewhere else.”
Pomegranates from Karingal Gardens are sent to the Sydney Markets as table fruit, but Ms Woods and Mr Smith haven’t ruled out growing pomegranates for juicing or aril production in future years.
Ms Woods said pomegranates have become wildly popular in Australia, as has the desire for Australian-grown pome fruit.
“I still think it’s on the incline… the supply is still not high enough for the demand of them at the moment,” she said.
