I couldn't find any information about growing it in Florida, so I am taking a chance and bought some seeds online -Lycium chinense, this is the variety that grows in the southern warmer parts of China. They took a long time to germinate, and they grew very slowy, of the 8 or so pots I planted, 4 survived, I've already planted 3 in the garden in different spots, I'm still looking for a spot for the last one.
This is a picture of one of them, now 5 months old. Apparently they take 3 years to bear from seed, so now its wait and see. The plants are very scraggly and needs to be supported.
They are in the Solanacea family that includes eggplant, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers .... and so far I have found them to be suspectible to the same pests, i.e. tomato hornworm, spider mites...whitefly
Hopefully i can keep it alive for three years in order to get some fruit from it.
Do you have an update? I live in sofla and was interested in planting them.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: I had 1 plant that really seemed to be doing well. Must have been about 5 feet tall.
ReplyDeleteThen the landscapers did a fall cleanup, pruned the bush to the ground and it never recovered.
I've since then learned that the goji berry is not really very edible, its more a medicinal plant, one of the recent hype anti-oxidant plants. Next month/year it will be the next thing, like acai.
Its in the same family as tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and suffers from the same pests.
I won't be growing it again.
For the amount of trouble to get it to grow and the fact its not really that great tasting (from reading others comments), not worth the trouble in my book, rather grow more pineapples.
ReplyDelete