Attention: Goji Berry Lovers

How To Grow Your Own Goji Berry Shrubs.

Discover How You Can Grow Your Own... and When You Can Expect Your First Harvest

Nederland, CO From the Desk of Rachel Thorogood So You want to grow your own? It's fun being self sufficient. Growing your own food is one great way to do this. Besides, then you know it's pure and clean, because you nurtured it yourself.

Rachel Thorogood Health Advocate

Goji Berries are also known as Lycium Barbarum or Chinese Wolfberry. The plants are deciduous, woody perennials and are very adaptable.  They like lots of sun, preferring climates that are hot and dry in the summer, but they will grow just about anywhere, including in humid climates.  Lycium Barbarum can tolerate very cold winters, and it thrives better in some areas than others.  If you want to try growing your own, you'll just have to try it and see whether the plants like the climate you live in.

How do you grow Goji shrubs or vines? For starters, you will need to simulate a hard winter by freezing the berries for about a month.  (You can also skip this step.)

Next, soak them in good water in a germinating tray. This feels like a wet spring thaw to the berries. In a week to 10 days they will germinate, getting little roots. Then they're ready for planting in starter pots. Typically, about half the seeds will germinate.

Prepare your “soil” from a mixture of worm castings and biological compost, with enough sand so that any excess of water can drain easily. Goji berries grow in an alkaline soil of a ph of 8.2 to 8.6 in their natural habitat.

Plant the germinated berries about half an inch down in the starter pots, deeper for very large berries. The actual seeds are smaller than a tomato seed.  In our experience, it will take 10-14 days for them to start coming up.  The first green shoot will have leaves so tiny that you have to look very carefully to even see them. The plant is adaptable once it sprouts.

[Our experience is that they grow rather slowly the first few months.  At that point the roots reach the bottom of the pot.  Once that happens, the plant stops growing. 

When the seedlings have outgrown their starter pots, you can put your small Goji shrubs in 5 gallon buckets, with drain holes punched in the bottoms. That way you can move them around if you need to. The full size shrub can grow to 8 feet, and tends to be slightly wider than tall.  However, they won't get that large in a bucket.  This is because the plant stops growing once the roots hit bottom.]

The Goji plant is quite hardy. It likes full sun except in hot climates. What else would you expect from a plant that originated in the Himalayas?

Hopefully you’re not in a hurry for the berries. The shrubs don’t usually bear fruit until about the third year. But you can use the leaves in a salad while you wait.  You’ll know your shrubs are about to bear fruit because you’ll start to get small purple/white trumpet flowers from summer until the first freeze.

You can get your Goji shrub to become more bushy by nipping buds so that it forms more branches.

A wide variety of animals such as rabbits, birds and deer also like to snack on the berries . Beware of the tomato worm and other insects.  When I first started growing Goji plants, I was mystified when most of my biggest plant disappeared overnight shortly after I put it out in it's second spring.  The next afternoon, I caught  Jay trying to eat most of what was left.  It seems we are not the only ones that think that the leaves make a dandy salad.

Once you’ve got a good shrub going, you can further propagate your plants by taking cuttings.  The plants grow up to 1 meter high.  The stems are thorny with green, lance shaped leaves.  They bloom with small, purple flowers.

Ah, finally, at long last – the harvest. Pick your Goji berries carefully; they bruise very easily. Also, there is no fast way to pick them, so be sure to leave plenty of time.

As your goji shrub grows, year after year, the berries will become larger and more nutritious. This is like the wine grape - older vines produce better grapes.

[Update, March 2009: In the two+ years that this article has been here, we've yet had anyone call to tell us that they've had great success growing a Goji hedge from seed.  The only successes we've heard about is when the hedge was started with a cutting.  You can then take further cuttings once you've got one plant growing well.  We now have a source for cuttings from a hedge that has been growing in Utah for about 150 years.

How did a Goji hedge get to Utah?  Chinese labor was used to build the transcontinental railroad.  Evidently they brought Goji berries with them. For some reason they took to the desert soil near where the east and west railroads joined.  All this is a fascinating part of American history.  You can research it further by searching for "golden spike."]

You’ll want to be eating the berries while your Goji berry garden matures for a few years. After all, you’ll want to experience the powerful nutrition of the goji berries in the meantime.  Why not buy more than just a few berries?

If you buy 10 pounds, that should last you about a year!  However, if you find yourself gulping them down because your body craves them, this is a good thing, and you can buy more when you run out.