My goji berries taste awful.

What's up?  They are very bitter, like something that should not be eaten...

Did you grow them from seed?

I am not a huge fan of them, but the fruit from seedlings my friend grew were definitely inedible, much worse compared to berries from a known cultivar..

I have named varieties and they taste awful.  Maybe air drying might make them taste better?

D Nikolls wrote:Did you grow them from seed?

I am not a huge fan of them, but the fruit from seedlings my friend grew were definitely inedible, much worse compared to berries from a known cultivar..

Came from a nursery.  Guy told me it was a good variety.

I like mine, but they do need to be very ripe.

Is this one of those, "Cilantro tastes like soap" things? There are definitely differences in human taste buds and some people will taste "bitter" compounds that others can't taste. This is beyond the more normal "acquired taste" and is apparently affected by age - "bitter" is often much more tolerated by older humans than younger ones according to something I read. Of course, where humans are concerned, rules were meant to be broken or at least bent!

I have two types.  One is Chinense? and it's very bitter.  Tons of tiny berries, and I normally just let the birds eat them.  They stay green through winter here in zone 8a, but suffer through the summer, and often defoliate in July/August.

I have another variety I grew from seed from the grocery store bulk bin.  Those are sweeter (nothing special) about twice the size of the others (still pretty small), and don't do nearly as well as the Chinense.   They go dormant in winter, and look terrible in July/August.

I'm not impressed with either.

Joshua Bertram wrote:I have two types.  One is Chinense? and it's very bitter.  Tons of tiny berries, and I normally just let the birds eat them.  They stay green through winter here in zone 8a, but suffer through the summer, and often defoliate in July/August.

I have another variety I grew from seed from the grocery store bulk bin.  Those are sweeter (nothing special) about twice the size of the others (still pretty small), and don't do nearly as well as the Chinense.   They go dormant in winter, and look terrible in July/August.

I'm not impressed with either.

Joshua, do the plants look the same? Or close? I have a vague recollection when I was researching the plants years ago that what the grocery store calls "goji" berry and what was originally called goji berry in Asia, were two different plants from different genii.

They're certainly uncommon enough where I am that who knows what I actually ended up with!

Jay, no, I wouldn't say they look the same.  The store bought goji leaves are long and narrow, and the Chinense (or what I believe is the Chinense variety) is much wider and about the same length.   Also, the store bought gojis are growing much taller (over eight feet), but less dense.  The Chinense seem to be much fuller, but more squatty (about four to five feet tall).

I only had one small berry on the store bought right now, but earlier in the year they were about twice the size of what's in the picture.  
Vs. the hundreds of ripe berries on the Chinense (more bitter).

The Chinense are much more happy here.  They seem to produce 100x more berries, and look healthier in general.

I purchased a plant last year, some berries, but birds got them, this year no berries.  I took a few cuttings & just put them in soil, now transplanted a couple beside original goji plant, will see what happens next year I guess.

Looking at the pictures, the small orange type looks like a wolfberry as I know it with a gogiberry being bigger.  The web says that they are the same thing but the ones I have are small sweet and full of seeds as well as yellow.  I bought this plant as a wolfberry.  It could be the location that causes the flavour.

Mine are awesome, they taste like a strange cross between a very sweet tomato and a....maybe a sweet cranberry.  Being a nightshade, that's not surprising.  It's a hard to pin-down taste.  These plants, along with my rose hips, are my reserve vitamin C sources.  

The commercially available plants are hybrids so the seed won't likely produce true.  When I got my plants I read up on them and found they like a very alkaline soil. I obliged them with a healthy dose of lime.  Took them a long time to establish in my iron laden clay, but once up they did fine.  

I've had bad luck with getting my Goji berry plants to flower or fruit. I transplanted several nice plants from 1 gallon pots into a garden bed last year and have given them sun, fertilizer (chicken manure, wood ash, bonemeal), lime, mulch (wood chips), watering and even foliar feeding. Still, no sign of flowers- am I doing something wrong? Do I just need to wait another year?

Just an update, my goji plants finally began blooming in September after all that work. However, it looks like they won't be able to ripen the berries before winter hits. They seem to have problems timing their flowering correctly to insure pollination and ripening.

I'd love to hear more about how your goji plants are doing.  I just grew some from seed from Baker Creek.  I planted the red ones and they had a black one that is supposed to be sweeter.  Both have germinated and sprouted in peat pots so I won't have to disturb the roots when I set them out.  I've never tasted them so have no idea if I even like them.  I just read they are very healthy so wanted to add them to my berry collection.

Fresh goji berries always taste awful- bitter and resiny.  They must be dried before eating.

Blake Cothron wrote:Fresh goji berries always taste awful- bitter and resiny.  They must be dried before eating.

Weird.. my Goji berries, and their wild wolf berry neighbors are juicy and delicious. Maybe it’s the soil/environment? I am in the desert, just outside of Death Valley, and it’s one of my favorite plants. One of the first things to green up in the spring, and super abundant with fruit. Super hardy, and will probably take over my whole front yard if I let it (which I might). Different appearance and growth pattern between wild wolf berry, and nursery bought Goji.. short, sturdy, and woody with tiny fleshy leaves for the former, and tall (new shoots grow head high in a season), slender, with longer and flatter leaves for the latter. Both very thorny, with no distinguishable difference in the flavor of either berries.. both excellent! Been meaning to take some pics. Soon..

Also, the dried berries are a treat, and living in a natural dehydrator makes this easy.. haha!

Blake Cothron wrote:Fresh goji berries always taste awful- bitter and resiny.  They must be dried before eating.

Ted Abbey wrote:Weird.. my Goji berries, and their wild wolf berry neighbors are juicy and delicious.

I did some research at one point, and it seemed to me at the time that there are two different plants that in my area produce a berry that is called "goji" berry, but are in fact two different plants from two different families - one of was always eaten dried.

I don't know if it's just that botanical names have changed, or if humans have been doing selective breeding, or if my sources had things garbled. I recall one of the sources suggested that the original plant was a rare high mountain plant on one of China's borders, so it could be a translation issue as well.

Yes, there are a number of species that are collectively called "Goji berry' adding to the confusion.

Blake Cothron wrote:Yes, there are a number of species that are collectively called "Goji berry' adding to the confusion.

That suggests the difference in taste could be a "they're two different plants" problem, as opposed to the "cilantro tastes like soap" problem, which is a human taste-bud problem which is believed to actually have a genetic base. Apparently if you keep eating bits of cilantro, many people accustom to the taste, but alas, it still tastes like soap to me, and the few goji berries that I get on my not terribly happy goji bush, taste lovely if I pick them fully ripe.

I always thought cilantro smelled sorta like stink bug...

Anyone have good instructions on drying these berries? I’ve got two varieties, one with long narrow leaves and one with shorter leaves. The long narrow ones produce big berries that are easy to dry but the ones with the shorter leaves always turn black when I dry them. What might I be doing wrong. Any help is appreciated.

Hi Ryan welcom to the Permies!

As far as I know there are two main types of goji berries: one with small leaves and bears more berries and the other kind has bigger leaves and smaller and fewer fruits. People generally use young shoots instead of fruits for the latter one. But I am not sure of the round leaf vs narrow leaf. Could it be some kind of wolf berry?

When goji berry dries the color will turn darker. For the berries you mentioned, are they still taste the same despite the colors?

Hi Ryan,

Welcome to Permies.

Hey May, I have about 50 plants of the variety that you have shown. The berries tend to be smaller and have a very bitter taste when fresh. Once dried they turn almost a blackish color and the flavor gets a little better but still slightly bitter. I purchased this variety at the store and have used cuttings to get to the number of plants I’m at now.

The second variety, I grew from seed from a bag of berries I had bought. The berries on this variety tend to be much larger and sweeter. Not nearly as many berries but the ones I get are good. They are only on the first year from seed this March so I figured I wouldn’t start to see a big crop yet. These ones dry out much better and retain a more reddish color.

Thanks

Ryan Emory wrote:The second variety, I grew from seed from a bag of berries I had bought. The berries on this variety tend to be much larger and sweeter.

That's good to hear! Last year I tried starting plants from seeds from dried goji in a mix I bought for snacking on. The germination rate wasn't very good, but I ended up with 5 small plants as they were very slow to grow also. Unfortunately, I put them out on the front porch to harden off, and one night a slug came by and ate all of them to the ground. It was *very* discouraging! However, I've gotten over that by deciding to try germinating them starting last week. I'm hoping to get them a little bigger before needing to harden them off. I'll also put them on the table on the front porch to make it a little harder for the local humongous slugs to get to them.

That the ones you started from seed seem to taste good is hopeful news!

May's caption on her photo about picking time reminds me of our native Huckleberries. I just try to remember that the nutritional value per berry is significantly higher than most if not all commercial fruit - it only takes a few to do a lot of good for out diet!

Yes, I had a good success rate with the ones from seed. I started them on a heat mat around March and kept them inside for the first 6 weeks. They’ve taken off like weeds ever since. Most are about 5 feet tall now and 1/2” dia stalks. I’m out in California where growing conditions are pretty ideal, hoping for a much larger crop next year.

These are the two different varieties I have. The one with more foliage produces smaller berries that taste more like a bitter pepper and when dried turn a very dark color. The second variety picture is the one I get from seed that produces larger berries that taste good fresh and dry.

I am trying to figure out if the the one with more foliage will every produce berries like the second variety or if it might be worth not harvesting that one.

Here is variety that I first talked about that produces a lot of smaller berries that don’t taste too good.

Some nurseries sell improved "lifeberry" goji with bigger and sweeter fruits.  It does look like the one in the first picture.

I started 4 pots with seeds placed in a pattern, such that each pot had at least 2 seeds from 4 different fruits. Last time I tried, it seemed as if some fruit didn't have any viable seeds, and some fruit germinated better, so that why I tried mixing the seed sources in each pot.

So far, I've got 6 in 1 pot, 3 in a second pot, 2 in the 3rd pot, and "maybe 1" in the fourth pot - go figure!

However, they mostly are matching the pattern, which suggests to me that they're actually baby gogi plants and not weeds! I don't sterilize my homemade potting soil, as I want to keep the good microbes, and I'm willing to risk the downside if it happens. I might not be able to take that approach if I was trying to do this on a large scale, but on my very small scale, it's working.

Hopefully they will keep growing. It will be a tough decision whether I transplant some of the babies to their own pots and when to do so, rather than just picking the healthiest in each pot and snipping of any extras. I'm really bad about that last approach. I feel that every seed I germinate deserves its day in the sun. If I end up with more than I can plant, I have friends!