Goji berry

Hi

I bought the Goji berry in the spring but in the last couple of weeks some of the leaves have started to turn brown. The shrub is in a large plastic container at the moment. Could it be deficient in nitrogen?

Thanks,
Kris

Lovely looking plant, but I suspect that it has outgrown its container.

The container is four times bigger then the original that came with it when I bought it. Would the plan grow out of its pot that quickly?

Thanks,
Kris

I bought a goji berry once and the slugs ate it. What I read so far is that they don't want to be treated nicely compost fertilizer etc. Poor soil is apparently all they want.
You can grow them from supermarket berries.

The slugs love the three small goji berry starts that I bought and planted in our school garden last year.  Small slugs, between 5 mm and 20 mm long, like to nestle down into the base of the goji berry, where the branches meet the soil and I think they must climb up at night and eat any green growth on the little branches down to nubs.  Last year, the little starts were barely able to produce any leaves at all.

This year I do have one of the three starts with new leaf growth and I'm using a combination of eggshells, wood ash, and coffee grounds around the base of all three plants, in hope one or two of the others will also come back.  We'll see.

But, slugs ate a lot of my immature annual vegetables soon after we put them out last year too.  In the longer term we'd love to get ducks, but for now we're trying eggshells, coffee grounds (which have been effective in another bed so far this spring), wood ash, and probably some garlic oil spray.  We are also using apple slices under cardboard as a diversion, but I haven't had any luck with that so far.  Last year, I did some beer traps and they only trapped a few slugs.  Later this spring, I think we will be getting chickens, but I don't know if we can get them to hunt slugs in the garden as is more possible with ducks.

In any case, in my experience, slugs LOVE goji leaves!

Some of the people around here swear by an empty grapefruit half. If you have anyone who eats them with a spoon, maybe you can try those instead of apple slices. Wouldn't hurt to try any other citrus you squeeze for juicing, either.

Slugs love goji leaves, because they are delicious. We can use them in the salad ourselves. My goji berries do slowly loose leaves in our not so cold winter, and then leaf out again in the spring. I think it is just their natural cycle. Same is with lemon verbena shrub. I actually ended up throwing out one, and almost threw one more, but I got busy with other stuff, and by the time I got to it, it was sprouting new spring leaves...

Kris Minto wrote:Hi

I bought the Goji berry in the spring but in the last couple of weeks some of the leaves have started to turn brown. The shrub is in a large plastic container at the moment. Could it be deficient in nitrogen?

Thanks,
Kris

i dont think its N
they have a low requirement, often growing in sand.
try magnesium (epsom salts + iron)
the same thing happened to a few of mine when i transplanted them into 3yrds of soil i had bought
that was high in organic material
( it was basically compost, but a lot was woody and not broken down all the way)
it may have been robing nitrogen ?

anyway, it corrected after a couple of months and some epsom + iron.

i dont think its the iron.

i had a guava with the same color leaves (purplish)
i read they do that when they have trouble getting potassium
when it gets cold, the PH changes, and my guavas leaves turn purple.

Goji like alkaline soils
maybe its PH ?
if you have a lot of organic material in the soil
Now i am thinking probably PH...

As far am aware they are better in a extra large planter because they grow wild in the ground they still do but not as much. I have had mine for a year had no fruit yet. The leafs died off and then revived it self now with all the rain they have lost leafs again some are renewing themselves I'm just going to leave them to do there own thing and hopefully I will get fruit at some stage. I have mulch on it to keep it moist.

Kris Minto wrote:

i dont think its N
they have a low requirement, often growing in sand.

Goji like alkaline soils

The best wild goji bush I've seen was grown on alkaline soil in Bosque del Apache NWR New Mexico. It was loaded with red fruits in 100 degree heat.