Tibetan Goji Berry just arrived...woohoo!

Krowten, what zone are you? I'm borderline 5b/6a...more 5b lately. I would really really really like to grow some Goji!!

Michelle in Michigan

MsKatt, I think our zones are about the same. We had a very mild winter here, followed by a severe cold snap just as plants, slow to go dormant, started leafing out early. I think you will be able to grow the plant without much trouble. However, I can't comment on fruiting as mine is very sparse. I've found it is much easier to just buy the dried fruit. good luck!

Thanks krowton... I'm going to try it

Just an FYI that goji is being offered in the Plants Trading forum.

Just ordered some seeds... :)

Michelle in Michigan

How is everyone doing with their goji plants? What is the oldest plant that anyone has. Any tips?
Did I get this correct? I can just soak the dried goji berrie to get the seeds?
Mickeyaz

I have had mine since November. I almost killed them by keeping their soil too wet. They are coming back great now.

I have just soaked some more berries and will plant the seeds after the new moon. If I surround them with 4:00 (The flower that kills) the grasshoppers may just let them live. Wish me luck.

Bob

Mickey, My plant is at least 4 years old. I have to cut it back a couple times a year to keep it contained. It blossoms constantly starting late spring, but unfortunately I only get a few berries in late fall. I have several plants now in different locations, all from cuttings of the original. The cuttings are ridiculously easy to start.

I think the fruiting issue is caused by several factors. The blossoms do not appear to keep pollen viable for more than a few hours and the local pollinators don't seem to be effective in creating fruit, although there are a number of insects that service the flowers. However, if I hand pollinate, I get fruit. There is more pollen on the flowers later in the year thus the late season fruit. I keep wondering if my plant is a dud or if there is something I am not doing right. I'm still learning with this one. I may get an additional plant from another source (or seed) to see if cross pollination would help, but it may be an issue of getting the right pollinators to visit at the right time.

Krowten,
I have heard that there are several types of goji berry plantts.. Perhaps you have a poorer producing type?
How did you start your plant? Were did you get your seeds?
Thanks,
Mickey

I don't know much about this but I got my gojis from One Green World because they actually put a variety name beside the selection - it is one of the most common varieties grown in China, and is not a seedling. Seedlings are often much less productive than the named varieties. But, don't know about the particular case of gojis..

Scott

If you are reproducing from cuttings, and your source is reproducing from cuttings, you may not have a cross pollinator that works. Many fruit trees require a different variety, because the same variety is a clone taken from the original tree. Self pollination usually gives lower productivity, and this would be self pollination.

I am planting seeds from purchased goji berries sold for consumption. If these seeds are all from hybrids or from clones, then I may not have the same results, but typically when you buy a food product and use it for seed, you at least know that the mother was productive enough for the farmer to keep it. The fruit is also proof of productivity.

Bob

Bob, gojis are self-fertile and need no cross-pollination. Many fruit trees do require cross-pollination but many others do not (e.g. most grapes and peaches are in the latter category, a single specimen will produce fruit on its own).

You are also incorrect about the correlation between the parent and the seeds. 90% of apple seeds (from your favorite variety) will produce a tree with apples which will likely be small, tart, and flavorless. Nearly all cultivated fruits of the world are propagated from cuttings or by grafting, and for good reason. I don't know about gojis in particular, each plant varies in how good the children stack up compared to the parent. Plants which are self-fertile tend to reproduce a bit better from seed than those which are not self-fertile.

If you want to learn more about fruit (and vegetable) breeding I would recommend Carol Deppe's book on breeding vegetables which also goes into fruits a bit.

Scott

My goji came from One Green World, but before they stocked the named variety. I do have some concerns about the plant itself being a quality one, but do not have enough information to determine that.

Scott, you are confusing terms. I myself like self fertile plants. However self pollination, even in self pollinating plants often gives reduced productivity.

In fact the examples you used, grapes and peaches, are generally considered to be more productive with another variety to cross pollinate. Some grapes are pistillate, and are not productive with out a cross pollinator. A lot of peach varieties also require cross pollination.

I have not read Carol Deppe's book, but I will. I thank you for your recommendation. I very much enjoy reading on this subject.

Your data on parent and seed may be a bit narrow. A lot of fruit trees take ten or so years to produce fruit unless you graft, and a lot of them, because they are great or traditional commercial plants without particular disease resistances are grafted onto other root stock to allow them to live. Additionally, small tart apples usually are quite flavorful and are much better for cooking as a result. Tart is all by itself a strong flavor. In this case, I think you may have bought into some of the incorrect information that seed and plant companies want you to believe. Many "hybrids", even F1 hybrids sold in fact do breed true. Many plants will do fine from seed, despite what is considered common knowledge.

My own experience is that when you raise from seed, you often lose some of the qualities. In most cases, after you have raised a plant for a few years, the plant adapts to your environment, and you get vastly superior plants to the original. With just a touch of selection, your plants are superior in every way.

When growing from seed you could lose qualities such as shipping, storage, sweetness, color, chill hour range, form, size, yield, and so forth. Often the parent has no disease resistances in the roots, so the children are vulnerable . To make a commercially viable plant, often requires a set of characteristics that take amazing odds to duplicate. A good commercial fruit tree may well be unlikely to show up in your backyard. From a particular given seed, you are unlikely to get a commercially viable apple tree. However a lot of small hobby gardeners have grow apple trees from seed and been delighted by the result.

Some really good commercial varieties have even been found in the wild, it happens. There are plants that are absolutely superb in the yard and garden, that because they do so well, are not as commercially useful. Onions that produce more onions instead of producing more rings, are hard to find, a lot of folk don't even know they exist despite being wonderful, productive plants to have. Why would a company that makes their money selling starts want to distribute a plant that starts itself constantly?

It is amazing how many businesses tell you not to get into their business. Hybrids are neat because of the vigor. Often hybrids are mules that produce poor seed because they are mules. However, old strain hybrids risk loosing vigor over time as their gene pool is kept stagnant. Maintained Hybrids are genetic dead ends. Hybrids can give great plants, however the plant companies value the monopoly more than the any other quality.

Many fruit trees, left on their own often take ten or so year to mature and produce fruit. So instead of waiting those years, often we splice to combine root, form and fruit characteristics, and come up with trees that will sicken and die in a fraction of the years a naturally grown tree would have lived. Commercially a tree that will start producing for you in four years, lives twelve years and has a competitive fruit, and destroys itself and the soil by over production, is superior to an unknown quality, that will take ten years to produce a nice crop of fruit and live fifty to a hundred years. For a garden tree however a longer lived ones may be vastly preferred.

When trying to breed a tree to come up true, it might take generations. You could perhaps shorten the time by breeding back to the mother or reducing the gene pool in other ways, but then you might just make a weak tree, like many of the commercially viable trees are. Instead, every so often someone makes a few crosses and grows hundreds of trees, looking for a good one. Most of the time people do not bother. It takes too much space, time and water to make it rewarding. This is why a recent introduction is often a tree that was introduced forty years ago.

Then again, Luther Burbank got good results time and time again. His methods and theories were quite unique to say the least. I doubt seriously that you would have any respect for his theories about cultivating new plants as they really do not fit in with current beliefs.

Anyone who has actually raised these plants from seeds, and enjoys heirloom varieties, also knows that many fruit trees that might not produce marketable crops, will produce wonderful crops and will often live much much longer than the more economically useful tree. There are lot's of folk out there, that know from personal experience that the common knowledge about fruit tree propagation is only part of the truth. I have had wonderful fruit from trees grown from seed. Lot's of people have. There is a risk in growing your own. However the delight in having a unique and often superior tasting fruit makes growing from seed makes it worth while for some folk.

Many of the best fruit don't ship well, so they are not marketable, so people are not familiar with them, so they are not popular. Ever heard of the Ice Cream banana? Many fruit enthusiasts agree that it is one of the best fruit in the world. Probably that is a poor example for my argument, since it is a clone and self fertile, but since it must ripen on the tree and won't ship well, it is never going to make it big in the marketplace.

Since we use root stocks to create trees that have resistance from soil diseases, in many plants, we loose the ability to effectively grow them from seed. Those of us who love heirloom plants, often prefer the plants grown from seed we saved. Not just for the tradition, or to match an old recipe, but because maintaining hybrids, splicing and cloning are methods that reduce diversity and in the long term risk the future of plants that have had a long term symbiotic relationship with man, often prefer the plants grown from seed. Splicing has saved varieties that are quite valuable, but our dependence on it instead of quality breeding, freezes the development and evolutionary process. The end result endangers these varieties for our great grandchildren.

A lot of plants clone themselves. This can be very useful and productive. However it also can endanger that plant. Bananas are a very good example of this.

In this case, I must agree that I don't know all that much about Goji, apart from enjoying a small handful daily, having sprouted them from dried fruit, and being sad when the grasshoppers destroyed them. I do know that although they are related to tomatoes, they do no like the soil as wet as tomatoes seem to.

However, there are quite a few sites, where they discuss growing them from seed, advise you to do it, and have had good luck with them themselves. Since this plant will produce fruit quickly from seed there is a very good chance that over the years, farmers have selected plants that did well from seed. Goji is a fairly traditional plant, with long history and tradition. Many different areas claim to have the original, best, or more traditional plant. It is quite possible that their seed selection has improved this plant instead of crippling it the way that many of our commercial seed production methods do..

Seriously, when I was a child, it was common knowledge that you could not breed hardy Waterlilies. We now know that common knowledge was engineered early on to maintain control of the market. Hybridization methods were specifically developed to maintain that belief. It amazes me when someone gets upset because someone else tries growing a fruit from seed they collected. I remember when some folk were upset that others were breeding new Waterlilies.

Bob

Bob, I'm not trying to dissmiss growing from seed in general, only pointing out that it sometimes (not always!!) leads to plants inferior to their parents and may explain the above goji plant which is not productive. In fact right now I am growing apples, peaches, pears, kiwis, lemons, etc from seed. You wrote a lot above but let me try to comment on a couple of the particular remarks that you make.

Re: grapes and peaches, today nearly of the varieties grown are fully self-fertile for those crops - an extra plant really doesn't add anything. A few old American varieties of grapes (which you will never find in any common catalog) are not self-fertile, and muscadines are also not self-fertile. For peaches there are a couple (as in 2) common ones not self-fertile; I believe Indian Free is one of them.

Re: F1 seeds sold which come true, I think some of those are just companies who have taken a self-true non-F1 seed and labelled it as F1 to discourage people from saving it by thinking they can't. They even get a doubl win because it costs a lot less to manufacture non-hybrid seed since there is no need to isolate and cross-pollinate. I have tried to grow out seed of several F1 tomatoes and every one was a bust for me I can say.

Re: the lifetime of seed vs non-seed propagated plants, that only applies to a few cases. Any plant grown directly from cuttings (no rootstock) will have the same structure as the mother plant it came from and generally the same lifetime as well. The only reason why it may not live as long is there could have been viruses present in the parent plant (which can be removed by fancy heat treatment). There are a few rootstocks which shorten the life of the scion, e.g. the dwarfing apple rootstocks. But all you have to do is bury the graft and the scion will root and you have a tree that will grow as long as a seedling, because it has the same roots.

I am certainly not trying to discourage anyone from experimenting with growing from seed, and in fact I do that a lot myself and would strongly encourage everyone to try it. But the key operative word there is EXPERIMENT -- don't grow from seed something you do not know comes fairly true from seed already, unless you come into it realizing you are experimenting and could have a complete failure.

I don't know what you are referring to about Luther Burbank, I don't recall anything particularly radical that he did, and I admire his methods greatly. I only wish I had the time to make as many crosses as he did - I have only about 100 going now and he was doing hundreds of thousands.

I agree about fruit not shipping well that backyard growers should be growing. Pawpaws are another example, a native American fruit much better adapted to our country which requires no spray and produces delicious fruit which spoil too fast for commercial production.

I also don't know the specifics of the goji. The fact that sites recommend growing from seed does not mean a whole lot to me - historically there have been many new fruits which were first grown in the US primarily from seeds even though the average fruit was inferior (e.g. apples, peaches, jujubes, kiwis, lots and lots more). Eventually cuttings made it over and the varieties from other lands were vegatively propagated here. Jujubes are a good example of a fruit that did not catch on when it first came over, because the plants grown from seed in the early 20th century had dry, tasteless fruit. Only in the last 20-30 years when the improved Chinese varieties have made it over as cuttings have people started to appreciate the fruit of this plant.

Scott

Scott,

How is the productivity of your Crimson Star (Ningxia #1) plant? If you got it in the spring, you likely would have seen some fruit by end of the year.

By the way, I've learned that rooted goji does not appear to like a lot of water, but by some strange coincidence my cuttings root in plain water without significant issues. It's very easy to propagate.

Even though I purchased my original plant as a plant, I do suspect that it was a seedling rather than a cutting as propagation method.

I'd like to ask you guys (Scott and Bob - any others that want to help) to watch your goji flowering very closely this summer and get back to me about pollen duration on individual flowers. The pollen I see is white but only stays white for a few hours then seems to dry up after that. I'd appreciate the information.

If you can put a small bag on a flower, before it opens, you might be able to determine if the pollen is blowing or vibrating off As I recall, tomatoes are hand pollinated by vibration, It may be the goji is letting go of pollen more freely. If you collect some, you may be able to try your hand at hand pollination.

I am waiting for about ten more days before I plant mine, but I will share what I learn if I can get them to survive the grasshoppers.

Bob

krowten, I am just getting started this year with gojis -- they haven't even showed up yet. I will try to remember to have a look at the pollen when it comes.

Scott

Bob and Scott, I have done some hand pollination. The pollen comes off easy on the finger when white and is easily transferred to other flowers. That may be why I get the berries that I get. Many pollinators visit though.

Goji! I've wanted to buy a plant since I first was introduced to Raintree years and years ago. LOL...about 10 years ago I ordered from them, but either couldn't afford everything I wanted or something...can't remember now why I didn't buy them then.

Didn't know they would make me live forever until dead. :-) I guess I should have ordered them 10 years ago.

I just love interesting plants, esp. plants that produce every year without re-planting.

Looks like the place first mentioned above in the opening thread posting is OUT of stock now. Last time I looked at Raintree web, they were out also.

A,

OneGreenWorld.com is advertising a Chinese variety.