Goji berry, Lycium chinense — also sold as wolfberry — is one of the quickest fruiting shrubs you can put in a garden. It bears in about a year, occasionally two, which is unheard of for a woody plant. That speed is the reason to grow it, and it is also the reason it needs a firm hand: a shrub that grows fast, fruits fast and seeds itself will take over a border if you let it.
What kind of plant a goji actually is
Goji is a short-lived perennial shrub, not a long-term tree. It reaches 1–3 m (3–10 ft) and grows at a fast to medium rate, throwing up long, slender canes rather than a solid trunk. Depending on where you grow it, it behaves as an evergreen or a deciduous plant — it holds its leaves in a mild winter and drops them where winters are cold.
Knowing it is short-lived changes how you treat it. This is not a plant to nurse along for a decade. Expect to renew it, and since it fruits in its first year, replacing a tired plant costs you almost nothing in waiting time. It is also why the propagation section below matters more than it would for a fruit tree — you will probably want to keep a young plant coming on.
Climate and cold tolerance
Goji grows in Mediterranean, subtropical, temperate and tropical climates, across hardiness zones 5 to 11a. Zone 5 means it tolerates winter lows around −29 °C (−20 °F), which puts it among the toughest fruiting shrubs available to a cold-climate gardener. At the warm end, zone 11a, it keeps going through frost-free winters and simply stays in leaf.
That range is unusually wide, and it explains the plant’s reputation for turning up in places nobody planted it.
Sun and soil
Give goji full sun. It will live in partial shade, but it will bear noticeably less fruit there — the plant survives shade, the crop does not. If you only have one sunny wall or fence line, that is where the goji should go.
The soil should be slightly acid and well-drained. Drainage is the part people skip. Goji is not fussy about fertility, but its roots do not want to sit in cold, wet ground, and heavy clay is where an otherwise unstoppable plant sulks.
When to plant a goji berry, and what to plant
The planting window runs from winter through spring and into summer, but the best time is winter to early spring. Planting then gives the roots the cool, damp end of the year to establish before the plant is asked to carry leaves, flowers and fruit all at once. A summer planting works, but it will need considerably more watering to get through its first weeks.
You can start goji from a plant, from seed, or by vegetative reproduction. Grafting is not necessary, and neither is vegetative propagation — but vegetative reproduction is easier and it is what most growers should choose. A cutting is a clone: it carries the fruiting habit and berry quality of the plant it came from, and it starts from wood that is already mature. Seedlings are a lottery in both respects.
Growing goji berry from seed
Seed is genuinely easy with goji, because every berry hands you a supply. Each fruit contains 10 to 50 seeds, and those seeds are edible — there is nothing to remove and nothing to be careful of when you eat the fruit.
- Squash a ripe berry and separate the seeds from the pulp, rinsing off the flesh so it does not rot around them.
- Sow into a slightly acid, well-drained mix, covering the seed only shallowly — these are small seeds.
- Keep the surface moist until germination.
- Grow the seedlings on in full sun before planting out at the normal winter-to-spring planting time.
The catch is not difficulty, it is uncertainty. Seed-raised plants vary, so if you have tasted a plant you like, take a cutting from it instead.
Support and trellising
Goji sometimes needs trellising, and whether yours does depends on how you want to grow it. Left alone, the long canes arch outward and then bend to the ground under the weight of the crop. Fruit lying on soil is fruit you lose — it picks up dirt, rots, and is easy pickings for slugs and birds.
Tying the canes to a fence, wires or a simple frame solves several problems at once: the berries hang clear and clean, air moves through the plant, picking is done standing up instead of crawling, and the shrub occupies a defined footprint instead of sprawling across the bed. On a wall or fence in full sun, a trellised goji is also getting the light that turns into fruit.
Pruning
Prune in winter. In a cold climate the plant is bare then, so you can see the framework you are cutting; in a mild climate it is simply the quiet point in the year before the spring flush begins.
The main instruction is specific and worth following: prune out the weak branches, because they cannot hold the fruit. Goji flowers at every leaf node, so a thin, whippy cane ends up carrying a load it was never built for. It bends to the ground, the berries are wasted, and the plant has spent its energy on a crop you never pick. Cutting weak wood out in winter redirects that energy into the strong canes that can carry a crop.
While you are in there, also take out anything dead, damaged or crossing, and thin congested growth so light reaches the middle of the bush. Since goji is fast-growing and short-lived, be decisive — it will replace what you remove quickly.
Watering and feeding
Goji needs an average amount of water: neither a drought plant nor a bog plant. Water steadily through flowering and fruiting, which is when the plant is under the most demand, and ease off in winter. Combined with well-drained soil, that steady middle course is most of the care this plant needs.
Flowers and pollination
Goji blooms in spring and summer, with small purple flowers carrying five petals. The important detail is where they appear: flowers can form at every node that has a leaf. That means the crop is not concentrated in a few trusses at the branch tips — it runs the entire length of every cane, and it comes in waves over a long season rather than all at once.
Bees do the pollination. Anything that keeps bees working the plant helps the crop, so avoid spraying anything while it is in flower, and remember that flowering and fruiting overlap on the same shrub for weeks.
Harvest and uses
Fruit ripens in summer and autumn. The berries are red and ovate, 0.5–2 cm long. The work required on the crop is exactly one thing — pick the fruit. There is no stoning, hulling or seed removal, because the seeds are edible along with everything else.
Because flowers open over a long stretch, so does the harvest. Pick over the plant repeatedly rather than waiting for one big day; ripe berries left hanging go to the birds.
With a large quantity you have three good options:
- Eat them raw, straight off the bush — the freshest form, and the one you can only have if you grow your own.
- Dry them, the traditional way to store a goji crop and the form almost everyone buys them in.
- Make jam, which handles a heavy pick in one session.
Growing goji in a container
Goji grows well in a planter, flowerpot or container — but it is not a houseplant and will not do anything useful indoors, because it needs full sun to fruit. Keep the pot outside in the sunniest position you have.
A container is also the neatest answer to the plant’s worst habit, since it puts a physical boundary around the roots. Use a well-drained, slightly acid mix, give the canes something to be tied to, and be aware that a potted plant dries out faster than one in the ground — with a crop ripening, that matters.
Keeping goji in bounds
The recognised difficulty with this plant is that it can be invasive. A fast-growing shrub that fruits in its first year, tolerates zone 5 to zone 11a, and produces berries packed with 10–50 seeds each has everything it needs to spread. To stay ahead of it:
- Pick the crop clean. Dropped fruit is a seed sowing, and each berry is dozens of chances.
- Watch for suckers appearing away from the main plant and pull them while they are soft.
- Keep the canes off the soil with a trellis, so the plant grows up rather than outward.
- Grow it in a container if you garden in a small or shared space, or next to anything you would rather it did not colonise.
Pests and problems
- Aphids — the main insect pest. They cluster on the soft growing tips and the young leaves, weakening and distorting new shoots. Because goji flowers on new growth at every node, damaged tips cost you fruit. Knock them off with a jet of water while numbers are low; ants running up the canes usually mean aphids above them.
- Birds — the pest of the fruit itself, and the reason many gardeners with a heavy crop end up netting the plant. Birds also carry the seed, which feeds straight back into the spreading problem.
- Canes bending to the ground under fruit — not a pest but the most common complaint. It is a support and pruning issue: remove the weak wood in winter, tie in the strong canes.
- Few berries — check light first. A goji in partial shade grows perfectly well and simply fruits less.
For the full plant profile see our Goji berry growing page.
