wolfberries

Anyone know where to get reasonably priced wolfberry plants. Everyone I have found are all $20-30 and I would bet those are tiny pots.
Thanks

One of the homesteads I worked at last summer had me plant about 100 wolf berry plants they had started from seed. Most goji berries that are sold in bulk at health food stores are actually wolf berries, as goji berries have not been successfully cultivated and the commercially available ones are wild crafted. So just go to the health food store, buy some goji(wolf) berries, soak them and then plant them in your own tiny pots. The people I worked for had a green house for propagation and transplanting. The wolf berries we planted were in 1 quart pots and were about 2 to 3 feet tall when we planted them out.

I germinated goji berries from the dried berries in the organic section of a local grocery store . Very cheap as each dried berry has many seeds .

So how big does each plant get?

David

The strains that we have around here have a "weeping habit", so they max out at about chest high. They spread by sending out shoots from the roots, so in these parts, the patch spreads outwards a few feet per year. Some years ago I collected a strain from the desert. It has survived, in an abandoned camp site, on about 8" of rain per year for the last 150 years. It wasn't thriving. The plants were about ankle high. But it hadn't died. I consider it an excellent candidate for permaculture in the Northern Great Basin desert. I'm intending to return it to the desert and plant it into a net & basin water collection system.

Goji Berry Flowers.

Jesse Grimes wrote:Most goji berries that are sold in bulk at health food stores are actually wolf berries, as goji berries have not been successfully cultivated and the commercially available ones are wild crafted.

I have been wondering about this since Jesse posted it. We're just throwing around common names here so it's hard to be precise, and I'm really ignorant. Are they two different species? Or two different common names applied to domestic cultivars and wild exemplars of the same species? Is there any practical difference?

I planted some berries-labelled-goji last summer and got lots of finger-tall seedlings, but none of them survived my brown thumb to get through the heat of the summer.

Dan Boone wrote:

Jesse Grimes wrote:Most goji berries that are sold in bulk at health food stores are actually wolf berries, as goji berries have not been successfully cultivated and the commercially available ones are wild crafted.

I have been wondering about this since Jesse posted it. We're just throwing around common names here so it's hard to be precise, and I'm really ignorant. Are they two different species? Or two different common names applied to domestic cultivars and wild exemplars of the same species? Is there any practical difference?

I planted some berries-labelled-goji last summer and got lots of finger-tall seedlings, but none of them survived my brown thumb to get through the heat of the summer.

What I planted last year was listed/cataloged as gojiberry (with other name's listed as wolfberry; gou-gi-zi; matrimony vine) in Richter's catalog and 'chinese wolfberry' on the package of seeds when it arrived, all were listed as lycium barbarum

I can't find the thread about growing them right now but there is one here somewhere ...they germinated well but definitely didn't like our summers at least the first year. The ones that I have that survived lived in pots on the north side of the house with hardly any sun. I brought half of them inside for the winter and they are *surviving*. I look forward to spring to see if they thrive or not.

Here is the thread I mentioned above... https://permies.com/t/40757/plants/Goji-seed

Judith Browning wrote:...they germinated well but definitely didn't like our summers at least the first year. The ones that I have that survived lived in pots on the north side of the house with hardly any sun. I brought half of them inside for the winter and they are *surviving*. I look forward to spring to see if they thrive or not.

Thank you! I left mine on the sunny side of the house with my container garden and they suffered throughout the summer. I think the last ones got eaten by rats in September. I am trying again this year and I will definitely see how they do on the shady side of the house (though I suspect they will get neglected since I have no watering infrastructure over there).

I carry them in my nursery here in North Florida.

And, of course, if you can get a hold of a couple of plants from anywhere online, they're pretty easy to reproduce via cuttings.

I suspect the weather is not the most important factor here. While the major growing areas of gojiberry in China are high and cold, I had some commercial organically grown gojiberry from Taiwan, where it is HOT and HUMID. I grew the plants from the seeds last spring and they have been doing well in my zone 8 place.

I found in Countryside & Small Stock Journal 11/12 2009 issue an article by Donald R. Daugs with Victoria Rainey of Utah "Wolfberry update". Some of the points are very interesting (and fun):

- According to the article that Lycium chinense and L. barbarum are two different plants, L. chinese is supposedly less nutritional than the barbarum, chinense plants do not grow as tall and has more thorns. "The Utah plants have very few thorns and grow more than 10 feet tall, which matches the identity of Lycium barbarum."

- "The Atlas of The Vascular Plants of Utah shows no locations for L. chinense, but quite a number for L. barbarum, the most interesting being a location near Promontory Point, Utah. This was where the first east-west railroad met and where the Chinese railroad workers either planted seeds or drupped dried goji berries. ..."

- "As an interesting aside, look up "Phantoms of Dove Creek" on the Internet. This will provide some clues as to how the Utah wolfberries came from China and became established in the Utah desert. ..."

- "… Rooted cuttings and bare root starts planted in early spring can produce fruit in the fall of the same year."

- (Probably the most relevant) "Potting soil was used for our first starts from seed, cuttings and bare root starts. This was a hard lesson learned, The soil was too acidic and the plant did not do well. Soil pH should be between 7.6 and 8.2. Garden soil here in Northern Utah has a pH of 7.8 and the Chinese commercial growing areas have a pH of 8.0 or more. The West Desert location has an even higher pH."

I'd classify my goji berries as Lycium barbarum. They were collected along the old railroad grade in eastern Nevada.

I bought some rooted cuttings from a local who said he had a ton of healthy bushes. I Believe what i have is l. Chinense And it has been flowering and producing berries in our local heat and humidity even though it is just getting established.

I have also found this photo of lycium berlandieri
in southern tx. Flowers appear to be white. This could be a possible candidate for desert berry growing.


David goodman, what Species do you carry?