Growing goji berries indoors is recommended if you’d like to get a head start on spring. It isn’t an ideal plant for growing indoors all year round. Berry producing plants require pollinators, or the wind to help germination, and they also require lots of sunshine to produce a large harvest of berries. Goji are not the fastest growers, so I prefer to start them indoors and let them grow to a decent size before I transplant them outside. In the picture above, you can see that I used peat pellets to start them. You can start them in potting soil, but peat pellets just make it easier and there’s no mess. When germinating any seeds it’s important to keep them moist at all times. If you let the seeds dry out it could kill it, especially with small seedlings. After the seedlings have two sets of leaves they are a lot hardier, but it’s still important to keep them well watered.
Growing Goji Berries
This year the seedlings took 2 months to get several inches high, and that was with them growing in the peat pellets without fertilizer. Usually it’s best to grow them in the brightest window available, however, they will also germinate in windows that don’t get a lot of light, though it might not be as ideal; Just use what you have available to you. When I’ve started my goji seeds it’s always been in the spring. Starting the seeds in hot greenhouses may not be as successful. Although starting the seeds indoors at any time should be fine.
If you use peat pellets or garden soil make sure to surface sow the seeds; there’s no need to cover them. After they are a couple inches high it is best to transplant them into potting soil. Goji plants prefer alkaline soil, they do best in soil that has a pH of 82. to 8.6. Wood ash makes a good fertilizer for goji berry plants because it will increase the pH levels (wood ash is alkaline and full of minerals).
The time it will take for the plants to mature and produce berries is at least 2 years. The time required for growing goji berries is well worth it, as virtually all of the parts of the goji plant are edible, from the roots to the tender leaves, and the ripe berries of course. All parts are very nutritious, the tender leaves can be used lightly sauteed or added fresh into salads. The mature leaves are usually too tough and fibrous.
Buy Goji Berry Seeds
The goji berry seeds I sell are from plants grown in Ningxia, China. Ningxia is known for being “The home of the goji”. You can buy these goji seeds here. The seeds are shipped from Canada.