Berserker - most of the pomegranates sold in the markets, probably 90%+, are Wonderful. As Richard stated, those are plentiful in various nurseries, etc. though I usually see them for something in the neighborhood of $19.99 at places like Home Depot and Lowe's. I suggest you do yourself a favor and go to Capitol Nursery and pay the crazy prices they charge and get yourself a Garnet Sash marketed by Dave Wilson Nursery which is really Parfianka, a top choice. Or you can get cuttings. Since you're in the area anyways, I suggest you come out to Winters on November 8th and taste what we have to pick from there at the USDA repository as you may decide to get something else. For a homeowner with limited space, I think a multi-grafted plant developed over a few years would be the way to go.
Richard, seedlings don't really take that much longer with pomegranates, just about one year later. My seeds planted in early 2007 produced flowers this year and are larger than any first year cutting propagated plants I've seen. Still, to be clear, I definitely would prefer propagation by cuttings if they are available. I've used seedlings where cuttings were not available in a few cases. It will be at least a couple more years before I can get fruits of decent size to be comparing.
So you're saying David plagierized himself? Can he write the same general comments for another publication? Boy, CRFG is going to lose volunteers for people writing articles if they start playing with those sort of rules. I remember seeing some tasting reports online somewhere in the past, but I'm not finding them in the SD CRFG newsletters right now at
www.crfgsandiego.org - /Newsletters/. In addition, I'm not finding any hint of any copyright notice in those newsletters. It looks like more changes are needed in your chapter!
I look forward to seeing you up at Winters, assuming I can make it again. I'll probably shuck pomegranates the day before and my ability to attend will be somewhat dependent on how busy my chestnut shipping season is going at that time. Chances are decent. If it was a week later I probably wouldn't have a chance of making it since I've shipped out 100 boxes for the past two years on the Monday that falls 10 days prior to Thanksgiving.
Joe did a good job with the different scores he assigned. I hadn't planned ahead that much since I was wiped out from the day before getting prepared for the tasting. One thing I suggested to Joe was that he should have rated seed hardness.
Hopefully, they'll let us roam the block again this year where we can scavenge around for varieties of other fruits to taste. I really liked Balegal, Palermo, and Kazake which were not in the official tasting. I plan to add those to my collection. Conditions can be quite muddy though I think they would move the tasting out of the field if it had rained recently. I was told that 2 or 3 years ago a hurried taster spun out and wound up in a neighboring walnut orchard!