How to Plant a Goji Berry: Container, Barrier and Why Not Straight Into a Border

Decide how you are going to contain it first

A goji is not a tidy shrub that stays where you put it. It sends suckers up from roots that run sideways well beyond the crown, and its long whippy stems arch over, touch the soil and root at the tip. Both habits are vigorous from the second year onwards. A plant set loose in a mixed border will be coming up between your perennials three years later, and getting it out again means digging every fragment of root, because a piece left behind regrows.

So the container question is not about convenience, it is the main planting decision. A large pot, 18 to 24 inches (45 to 60 cm) across and at least as deep, holds a productive plant indefinitely and ends the spreading problem completely. In open ground, plant it inside a buried barrier and give yourself a strip of mown grass or hoed bare soil at least 3 feet (90 cm) wide all round, so that anything escaping shows up somewhere you will see it and can deal with it in seconds.

Goji is genuinely tough about everything else. It takes poor, stony, alkaline and salty soil, shrugs off drought once established, and is hardy well below freezing. What it will not take is soil that stays wet in winter. If your ground puddles after rain and is still damp two days later, use a container or plant on a raised mound.

Site, soil and spacing

Give it full sun. Goji flowers and fruits on growth made in the current season, and shade cuts both the amount of new growth and the sugar in the fruit. Six hours of direct sun is a working minimum; eight is better. It stands wind well, which is useful, because the arching stems on an exposed site tend to lean rather than snap.

The soil wants to be free-draining and does not need to be rich. Goji naturally grows on poor dry ground and reacts to generous feeding by making meters of soft leafy stem and very little fruit. Do not dig in manure. If your soil is heavy, improve drainage with grit rather than compost, or plant on a mound 8 inches (20 cm) high. It is comfortable from pH 6.5 to 8.0, which is wider than most fruit and includes chalky ground where other berries sulk.

Space plants 5 to 6 feet (1.5 to 1.8 m) apart if you are growing more than one. A single plant is normally enough for a household: goji sets fruit on its own without a pollination partner, and a mature plant cut back hard each winter covers a lot of ground.

1. Sink the barrier before the plant Dig a trench around the planting area and set a solid barrier, rigid plastic sheet or heavy membrane, 18 inches (45 cm) deep with an inch or two standing proud of the soil. The lip above ground matters: a barrier buried flush lets roots creep straight over the top and the whole job is wasted.
2. Plant at the same depth it was growing Set the plant so the soil mark on the stem sits level with the surface, no deeper. Buried stem tissue on a goji roots readily, which sounds harmless and simply gives you a wider crown and more suckers. Spread the roots out sideways rather than coiling them into a narrow hole.
3. Cut it back at planting Shorten whatever top growth arrived with the plant to about 12 inches (30 cm) above the soil. It looks brutal and it is right. The plant fruits on new growth, so nothing is lost, and cutting hard now forces branching from low down instead of leaving you with one bare whip that flops over the following summer.
4. Water in and stake Water in thoroughly even if the ground is damp, then put in a single stake and tie the young plant to it. New goji stems are floppy and an untied plant lies down in its first summer, at which point the stems touch soil and root. One cane and two ties prevent that entirely.

The first year: build the plant, not the crop

Expect little or no fruit in the first year, and a small handful in the second. A goji reaches a worthwhile crop in its third year and a full one at four or five. Chasing fruit early by feeding heavily is counterproductive: it produces long soft growth that does not ripen well and flops onto the ground.

Water a new plant through its first summer, roughly 1 to 2 gallons (4 to 9 liters) a week during dry spells, poured slowly at the base. From the second year onwards an established plant in open ground needs watering only in a genuine drought. Container plants are different and need regular water for their whole life, because a pot dries out fast and goji fruit set drops away sharply when the plant runs dry at flowering.

Keep the ground under the plant clear rather than mulched deeply. A thick organic mulch against goji stems encourages the low stems to root into it, which is the one thing you are trying to prevent. A thin gravel mulch does the job of keeping weeds down without giving stems anything to root into.

Handle the plant as little as you can when you are working around it. Goji leaves and young stems bruise easily and the damaged tissue blackens within a day or two. It looks alarming, like a disease, but it is just handling damage and the plant carries on regardless.

What to write down at planting

Record the season you planted, the exact position of the crown, and where the barrier runs. Three years on, when suckers start appearing, you need to know how far the original plant sits from the escapees to judge whether a shoot came from a wandering root or from a stem that rooted at the tip. They are dealt with differently.

Also note whether you planted it bare-root or from a container, and how tall it was when you cut it back. Goji establishment is slow enough that a season-by-season note of height and stem count is the only way to tell whether the plant is on track or genuinely struggling, and the first two years look almost identical either way.