No, it's not normal.

Talk to the folks at your county's university Extension Service office.

Use this map to locate them:
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/Extension/

Here is a link that might be useful: locate your county's Extension Service office

Yeah, leave drop before winter is a bad thing. Can you describe what the leaves looked like before they dropped?

On some plants if they are allowed to over crop they will literally suck the energy out of the plant to ripen that fruit.....it is always a good idea to manage your plants so they produce within their means.

This post was edited by bamboo_rabbit on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 21:49

Thanks for all your helpful suggestions. I believe that the foliage loss was due to over-cropping. You see, I have no experience with pomegranates and this young tree only produced one or two pitiful fruits in the past years. I was really excited to see it covered with blooms in the spring.

Why I think it's probably over-cropping is that the foliage loss is mainly limited to the branches bearing fruit. The other ones (mainly on top) have healthy green foliage.

So what should I do not to let this happen again? Should I pick off some of the flowers in the future? How about pruning the tree?

Pomegranates fruit on the tips of new wood, they don't cluster like blueberries or fruit inches apart on the length of a stem. I'm not aware of pom fruit needing to be thinned or of the tree over-bearing. That's not to say that it isn't somehow possible. I sometimes cull smaller fruits that probably won't size up enough to be worth keeping, but that's about it. My money would be on some other cause of your leaf drop --such as over/under watering, pest or disease pressure.

"Pomegranates fruit on the tips of new wood, they don't cluster like blueberries"

It did have a few clusters like the one in the picture :)

Mrclint, I think you've nailed it -- there was over-watering, to be specific, on one occasion in late July I forgot to turn off the hose for six hours and the tree got soaked. The ground was wet and soggy for days. Likely this was a contributing or even the main factor to the loss of leaves.

Thanks again to everyone for your extremely helpful replies!

Yes, doubles and triples do occur. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. Some varieties are more prone to it than others. My Angel Red has a couple of doubles on it as we speak. They are on the tips of new wood and do not need to be thinned nor do they cause the tree to over-bear. Enjoy! :)