This is my 3 year old Goji. It came from Raintree. I train it similar to a single cordon grape vine or a trailing blackberry(except you leave the trunk and laterals there after fruiting). It is making a ton more berries than last year. My daughter and I picked the better part of a quart the other night until we ran out of light, there is many more ripe ones as you can see and even more green ones. The plant usually does two flushes of berries per year, after all the green ones ripen it will flower heavily again, but the bugs usually get most of the second crop. Which is fine, because I will have all the goji berry preserve I need for this year.


 

 

 

I prune it to my height, and it is on the south side of my yard shed. Seems very drought tolerant and plenty cold tolerant for here, it got to -25F unprotected and suffered no damage.

Calvin, thanks for posting these pictures. Very interesting, I also have a Goji from Raintree only one year old. I can't believe how big your plant got and how much fruit it is producing. After seeing your pictures I'm glad I got one!
 
  Take care,
    Peter

Calvin,

How does it taste? I never tried it before.

Thanks for posting this. I have been trying to figure out what to do with mine. Looks like the perfect solution for my yard too!

I'm glad  you are having better luck than I with the Goya. Mine is 3 years old and has yet to set fruit. Lots of tiny flowers, but never one fruit. I am going to throw it away this fall unless it quickly changes its ways.

I have to say, it is really nice to have something growing that is mostly effortless(compared to figs and the vegetable garden).

As far as taste, it is very hard to pin down. It doesn't taste like any other berry I have had. The berry is a little sweet, thin skin, and not  viscous(but this varies with rain/watering). The seeds shape are very similar to tomato seeds except for about 1/2 the size and no gel. The berry flavor is slightly reminiscent of.. a carrot?  The seeds are a little bitter if you chew them, they taste like the green shoulder of a carrot, so I treat the berry like a raspberry and just macerate it with my tongue. The preserve is one of my favorites, it's flavor is suttle and rich with a flavor similar to candied yams(fresh home made, not the crap in a can).

The berries will dry on the plant if you can keep the bugs off, stink bugs, wasps, box-elder bugs, and earwigs are all fond of them. Bees like the lavender colored flowers.

You're pretty tall!  I just got 2 plants and hope to have lots of berries next year  :)

Nope, just a short shed. I hit my head in there all the time. I'm only tall when I'm around a lot of short people!

I bought a goji plant from Peaceful Valley a couple years ago. It is still alive, but I can't say it's really grown at all. It gets the same soil and water as other fruit trees in the same row that are thriving (a little too fast). Fruit? Ha!

Calvin, thanks for the post.

I have a  question about pollination if one needs two Goji berry plants plants for fruit set.

I have one plant , 5 years old but neglected and still a long whip surviving in Zone 5a. Have not seen any fruit on it yet. I will start pampering it if it does not need another one for pollination.

Ottowan, I only have one, and I have never seen another in my neighborhood. So, you don't need two.

I'm not sure if the variety matters for production, the one I have is Phoenix Tears. I occasionally run accross them in the Denver area. I have never seen one nearly as productive as mine, but I have never seen one in full sun which is pruned like mine either. That side of my yard is lava rock on top of a couple inches of soil then mostly clay soil, there is a slight slope to our street and our back yard is terraced about 3 feet on each side, so that scraped away the top soil  at that spot. Maybe the Goji likes the clay, or the lava rock, or the intense sun with the white background. I water it with fish emulsion once in the spring and summer, and/or scatter a big hand full of a dry organic fertilizer like Plantone or Gro-Rich garden fertilizer under it. I water it every 2-3 days if we haven't had rain and it is real hot, but only when it is blooming or has berries, the rest of the time maybe once a week if even.

I have a 2 year old one from Burnt Ridge nursery that has grown a total of about 5 inches the whole time.  The catalog says they like alkaline soil and full sun.  It is lycium barbarium.  Hopefully I can get it going.

Well, I ended up with about 13 cups, give or take a little. That's not too bad for a bunch of tiny berries from one plant. I would have liked to picked about 3 more cups, but there are so many hanging on the plant that the bugs have chewed up that it's getting to hard to sort the good from the bad and it takes too much time. So, it is time to surrender the rest for the year to the bugs.

 

Very nice looking berries and the preserves!
Yummy!

Mine tasted sweet with little flavor earlier this summer. Now they are downright awful. Totally uneatable. Mine's outa here.

What is your recipe ?

That looks so good!

These berries are suppose to be very healthy for folks.  Do you feel any healthier after eating them?  -25  below would work for me in zone 4 WI

Shailesh, I bought it as a small plant in a 4" pot. I don't know if cuttings would grow or not.

greenbud, I don't know if I feel any different. I'm all for eating healthy, I guess if I'm going to make preserves it may as well be from healthful berries.

fignutty, I think that part of the reason they are so popular dried is that the lack of moisture really concentrates the available sweetness. That and the skin is so fragile they really wouldn't ship or store well fresh. That is why I make preserves, it is the best thing I have found to do with them and it comes out really nice on buttered toast.

Sas, I just basically follow the typical jam or preserve method.  
I put the berries in a pot, maybe add a bit water if needed. Cook them until they get very tender and some start to pop(15-30 minutes). Then I run them through the fine screen of a food mill to seperate the seeds and skins. (this year I took all the seeds and skins and put them back in a pan and added a little water, cooked them for about 5 minutes and screened it again because it seemed like there was more berry meat than usual in the screenings that didn't pass through. I won't do that agian, my preserve picked up a little more of the seed flavor which I don't care for, but not so much that it ruined the batch.) Then I clean my mill and run the strained juice/meat through a second time to remove more of the seeds that passed through the mesh. Then I put it back in the pot and added about a cup and a half of sugar. Cooked it down about half way and tasted it, it need a little bit more sugar, I also added juice from half a lime to give just a little pop, lemon would have worked too but I had lime. Also added about 1/2 tspn of butter somewhere along the line to control foam. Then I cooked until the bubbles and consitency were right for preserves. Jar it and water bath can for 15 minutes after water starts to boil again. This is the same method I use for blackberry preserves. No pectin needed.

Thank You for your recipe. I saw some dried ones at a local Vietnamese store and was thinking of making a preserve out of them. My second year plant from seed in a five gallon container is still too small to produce.

Hi cis4elk,
Nice bush. Funny, here, they start their blossom now.
Those bushes are easy to propagate . The bro bought one that had several sprouts from the dirt and at some point the bush took a shovel hit to take the tiniest out of the group.
He had them in a pot and gave them to me.
I rarely water mine, and this is the first year I see it bloom .
I'll see what comes out.
A colleague told me once, that one should only pick the well ripe fruit, or they would be toxic ... Ever heard of that ? Urban legend ?

Mine is taking a bit of space now and keeps growing long branches ... A tower ... Why not ?!? That could be a great idea.
I think I'll pinch mine (10 cm bits) and try to root those branches. I read somewhere - When frustrated of seing no flower at Spring time this year - that they would root easily ... Let me try that :) .

I was gifted a 2 feet tall sucker with small root. I planted in a gallon pot and am monitoring it. Well, when it decided to grow, it had no side branches for that length.. just started leafing out at the top.   so I leaned the pot side ways  (about a 45 angle) and left it there for a few weeks.. it stoped growing all together.  so I rotated the pot to the other 45 angle side and left it there for 2 weeks, again nothing...it was not dead, but was not growing.  Two days ago, I put it upright again and told it that it won, "grow up the way you wish to do"! for my surprise many side branches have started and it is growing very fast. I am happy, now I know what it does and I am going to give it a special SE corner to grow happy. I never tasted this berry, although I heard quite a bit of how amazing fruit it is... so I am happy to see your yumminess preserve.. perhaps you can share your recipe with us.  ( I wish fig trees grew side branches that easily)

Hi,
Update on mine : It grew fast, and eventually set fruit, but I only got 10 for a bush of 4'/1+ meter in width and the same in height.
I don't know if the neighbor's kids or the birds got them or if they fell. The fruit on mine is small and thin ; they are sometimes hard to spot or notice.
This year, the bush was growing crazy already and I cut 2/3 on each branch this week (3'/1meter of length each ) to force branching and for the bush to take less space.
I have some red currant bushes nearby and I want them to get some sun for thriving too .
I haven't tried to root the branches, but will perhaps try, just for testing .

I bought 8 plants this year. Looking forward to some good production next year. These berries are a superfood. 3 oz a day is about 80% of the vitamins and minerals and also enzymes that the body needs. Very good for you.

the trick to growing goji berries is that you need to start pinching early to keep it low and bushy or it will just keep climbing up up and up (8 or more feet) if supported. i have two varieties: one is really sweet and tastes close to a ripe persimmons and the other is little sweet yet slightly tannic and slightly waxy on the outside. mine started producing fruit in two to three years.
the history of the goji is interesting. one is the chinese helped build the railroads and one of the chinese must have dropped a seed or planted it and it's still there. look it up if you are interested.
hope this helps