Goji Berries

I had a packet of red Goji berry seeds as well as a packet of black Goji berry seeds so I soaked them in water over night.  They are so very tiny that I just poured the water with the seeds into 4 different peat pots for each kind.  Well, I noticed yesterday the black ones sprouted and now I have several of the tiniest seedlings.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to separate them out when they get big enough to hold together if I try to transplant them or not.  Anyone ever raise these?  I'm in the US in zone 7B and should be in the area where they live permanently.  I may just plant the whole pot and thin out all but the 3 strongest.  What would you suggest.  Have you ever tasted of either and what did you think?

kay fox wrote:Have you ever tasted of either and what did you think?

I periodically pick up dried red goji berries and add them to my morning oatmeal. I'm quite a fan, personally-speaking. Never tried the black ones, and in fact I'd never even heard of them or seen black ones available for purchase.

Best of success on your crop! I've never attempted to grow them. Hope it all goes well, and the plants stick around for many harvests.

I planted a Goji Berry bush that I found at Home Depot. It grew well, and the next year, I had new sprouts come up all around it. I put coffee cans filled with soil around these new starts, and at the end of the season, I cut the stem underneath and transplanted the now rooted stems. This worked well, and now I have a thorny, fruity hedge started along the front edge of my yard. This is one of the first plants to green up in the spring, and holds out past most other plants in the fall. Lots of delicious berries. Better yet, the hillside above this property is covered in the native variety, and when conditions are right.. there are more berries than I could ever hope to eat. (I looked for a pic, but I guess I never took one?!?)

i haven’t specifically dealt with black gojis, but i have dealt with plenty of tiny nightshade family seedlings. in my experience, if you separate them relatively promptly when they have 1 or 2 pairs of true leaves, they do alright. just tease them apart gently, they’ll do okay.

If anyone has pictures of goji berry cotyledons, please post!

I took some dried goji berries I was given, soaked them and gently pried out the seeds. I planted them, but since I want microbes in my seed starting soil, I accept that I may also end up with some weed seeds. Some "seem" to have germinated, and everything that has germinated looks more or less the same, but alas, many weed seeds look pretty much like what I'm seeing also.

That said, I would have expected my weed seeds to have put out some true leaves by now - these plants are pretty much just sitting doing nothing. I think they may like it warmer than my cold house!

I do have one goji berry shrub I bought, but it's not done much. It certainly hasn't thrived, the way Ted Abbey describes his thriving. I'm trying to improve the soil in that area, to see if that's an issue, but I was also hoping to give it some goji friends to cross-pollinate with, as I think that's why my goumi isn't producing fruit either. My climate doesn't usually get below 0C in the winter, but it also doesn't usually get very hot in the summer, and even when we get hot days, we cool off as soon as the sun drops below the trees due to the ocean. Many plants that one would think would be happy here, seem to struggle.

My red goji seed just sprouted too.  I got the seed from Baker Creek (rareseeds.com).  So far they are doing great.

Jay Angler wrote:If anyone has pictures of goji berry cotyledons, please post!

https://plant-zone.blogspot.com/2012/07/seedlings.html

Thank you, Raphaël! It does look like I've got Goji babies and not unknown weed babies - that's a relief! Now I just hope they'll put out some more leaves. I really am beginning to wonder if my ecosystem is too cold for this variety? They're getting supplemental light, but our house runs in the 60's temperature wise and they're beside a window that will be on the low side of that.  

There's good news, and there's bad news...

I decided in the spring to put the baby Gojis which were about the size of the ones in Raphael's picture above out on the front porch to start hardening off. Alas, we got a bit of rain and I came out the next morning and found a slug had eaten every one down to the ground. I was very discouraged!

I have one plant from years ago which never grew very much. In fact, I'd thought it had finally died. But it not only hadn't, it actually seems happier this year and produced fruit. Not a lot of fruit and it bloomed very late, but there is hope for it! There seems to be much confusion on the web as to what conditions are ideal for it to grow, but we may be a bit acid for it, so I'm going to try to add some egg shell.

However, that got me wanting to try again with seeds. This was late summer, and we had an unusually warm summer for here. The seeds germinated *very* well, and I've now got 13 pots on my window ledge, and a couple of the pots have two babies in them. I have a friend whose brother is trying hard to grow food and we've done some plant and seed exchanges, so a couple of babies will go live up Island with him, as I don't have the space for 13 of them.

Hopefully I will be more successful with this plant going forward. The berries are high in Vit C which is not as easy to find in my climate as I'd like. So long as the plant will eventually be fairly successful, I'm prepared to be patient!

If it's calcium they need, break up the eggshells and put them in vinegar.  It leaches out the calcium, otherwise it remains locked up in the eggshells more or less forever.  That's what I recall, anyway, from a class with Nigel Palmer.

I tried Goji berries (dehydrated) and really disliked them.  But I'll read anything when I'm putting off going to bed. . .