A. Watch the fruit and pick it when it is large and has changed color a bit. Do as you have been doing — leave it on the counter until it gives to a little pressure — and then peel the fruit, and sample the fruit sections. Are they sweet-tart and juicy? If so, they are ripe. If they are dry and bitter, you picked them too soon.

As with many gardening questions, the answer is that you have to experiment and test things out in your own garden, because no two microclimates are alike, and different plants behave differently. Keep your eyes and taste buds open, and you'll learn how to best grow and eat things.

Pomegranates are a classic. We had a nice bush of them growing up in Makiki, and the neighborhood rascal kids liked to sit on the lanai and eat pomegranate and spit the seeds at each other.

It is a pretty plant with gorgeous and intricate flowers. It is not so common in Hawai'i gardens today, so I'm glad to hear that you're growing it. Pomegranate juice, made by pressing the fruit, has become very trendy in restaurant kitchens for giving a tart background to sauces, and they are very healthy because they contain antioxidants.

Scientists call the pomegranate Punica granatum. It is native to Iran but has been carried all over the world.

In ancient times, pomegranates were grown in the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. There are stories from Japan about how a child-eating demi-god was given pomegranates by the Buddha, which she much preferred over the small-kid diet. Stories and legends abound in various cultures and countries, and I wish I had the space to share them with you.

If you visit the Koko Crater Botanical Garden on the way to Sandy Beach, you can see the ancestral form of our edible, large, fruited pomegranate. It has the scientific name P. protopunica. It was the prototype for horticulturists and ancient gardeners, who hybridized and selected plants to develop the juicy-fruited pomegranates we enjoy today.

In bloom

If you want to see pomegranate in bloom, you can also visit the Foster Botanical Garden. Pomegranate is grown in the economic garden by supervisor Carlton Luka and his enthusiastic staff and volunteers. There are lots of unusual flowering plants of various uses in this portion of the garden. The economic garden is bounded by Nu'uanu and Vineyard streets, and the mauka boundary is an old stone wall that dates back to the time of benefactress Mary Mikihala Robinson Foster.

Heidi Bornhorst is a sustainable-landscape consultant.