What it is
Goji Berry (Lycium barbarum) is in the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family. A tough, sprawling nightshade shrub that fruits in heat and poor soil. Dry the red berries for the famous superfood.
How to grow it
It wants full sun, water it low — drought-tough, and give it tolerant, even poor soil. Target a soil pH around 6.5–8.0. Space plants about 3–5 ft apart. Expect roughly 2–3 yr to bear. Hardy shrub.
How it's used
Goji Berry is used: fresh or dried berries.
🔎 How to identify it
- Narrow gray-green leaves
- Arching thorny stems
- Small purple flowers
Edibility
How to grow & propagate goji berry
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate goji berry
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and their cousins are warm-season crops started inside 6–8 weeks before your last frost, then transplanted out once nights stay above 50°F. Tomatoes are the exception to most rules — you can bury the stem deep or root a side shoot (a 'sucker') in water to clone a plant mid-season. Potatoes skip seed entirely and grow from seed potatoes — chunks of tuber with an eye or two.
Growing goji berry in Texas
Give it full sun and tolerant, even poor soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
Because it's a perennial, the work is mostly up front. Get it sited and established and it comes back on its own year after year — one of the best returns on effort in the whole garden.
Once it's rooted in, this is a low-water plant — overwatering does more harm than drought here. Water deeply to establish, then back off and let it prove how tough it is.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly 2–3 yr to bear before you're harvesting. Let fruit ripen on the plant where you can — it's where the sugars finish — and pick gently to avoid bruising what you don't eat right away. The part you're after: ripe fruit.
Making more for free
Every seed we sell is open-pollinated, which means you can save your own from the best plants and it'll grow true next year. Let a few of your strongest plants finish and go to seed, dry it fully, and store it cool and dark. That's the whole point of heirlooms — buy once, grow forever.
Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.