Goji crazy

Christian Kordes has rich horticultural bloodlines. He was born in 1978 in Hamburg, Germany, into a family that ran successful liner growing and world-renowned rose breeding businesses.

His grandfather founded Kordes Jungflanzen (Kordes Liners) in 1950. And Kordes Roses (www.kordes-rosen.com) has been growing beautiful, hardy roses since 1887.

Christian runs the liner business with his father, Gunter, and is always thinking about new ornamental varieties.

Kordes was cruising on the Autobahn one weekend when the idea came. His girlfriend was riding beside him, reading a magazine article about a “superfruit” that had become popular among movie stars for its apparent anti-aging effects. She asked him if he knew anything about the plant in the article: Goji berries. He recognized it, all right. His family’s nursery grew it and marketed it as a hardy shrub with excellent erosion control capabilities. But until that moment, he hadn’t realized the possibilities for home gardeners looking to grow a superfruit in their backyard.

Rich history
Goji, or Lycium barbarum is a sprawling shrub with long, flexible canes and clusters of small, grey-green leaves. The flowers are a brilliant royal purple and they appear in late spring/early summer along the length of the canes. They give way to juicy, bright red fruits that resemble small peppers. They grow sweeter as they mature on the plant. Goji plants continue to flower and produce fruit through the first heavy frost.

Although they’ve only recently become a trendy health food, the berries have a long history. They have been grown in China for medicinal purposes since 2600 B.C. They are packed with antioxidants and tout the ability to boost the immune system, normalize blood pressure, improve skin tone and even help prevent cancer.

“In competition to other fruits, goji is always on top,” Kordes said. “It has more than double the amount of antioxidants of pomegranates, which is the second-highest fruit.”

Goji berries have become a major industry in China, as the fruit has ridden the wave of popularity. Thousands of tons of berries are exported each year from 45 million goji shrubs. However, Chinese-grown berries tend to be heavily-sprayed with pesticides. Kordes saw an opportunity.

“As the goji berry has become more and more noticed, demand has increased,” Kordes said. “People like them, but stores cannot get enough dried berries that aren’t full of pesticides from China. So there are not enough berries on the market.”

In 2010, he began breeding the plant for two qualities: berry size and sweetness. He brought two cultivars to the U.S., where they will be grown under the Proven Winners ColorChoice Flowering Shrubs program. The 2013 introductions are known as Sweet Lifeberry and Big Lifeberry, respectively, and have spent the last two years being tested at Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven, Mich. The difference between the two cultivars is that Sweet Lifeberry has a greater quantity of smaller berries, while Big Lifeberry will provide fewer, larger berries.
 

Growing goji
Tim Wood, marketing manager from Spring Meadow Nursery, said the two varieties Kordes brought to the Michigan nursery are grown from cuttings. He suggests using a sturdy stake, around 2” by 2”, although the plant would also work well on a fence or wall.

“When they are fruiting, the plant gets really heavy,” Wood said. “We used smaller stakes the first year, and the weight of the fruit just snapped the stakes. Now, we trim them back to the top of the stake at the end of the year.”

They self-pollinate and use the wind to spread, so only one plant is necessary to produce fruit.

Either variety will grow fine in a container, as long as it is large enough – it should be at least 18” in diameter and have a drainage hole. The container should also be weatherproof so that it can remain outside, planted with your goji, all year long. Use any regular potting soil to plant in and be sure to keep a close eye on watering, particularly during the hottest part of the summer.

Goji berries turn red very quickly but will taste slightly bitter until they are fully ripe. Taste is your best indicator, but in general, the berries should spend several weeks on the vine before being harvested. It is best to harvest before the first frost, however, because cold can diminish the flavor of the fruit.

You can eat them fresh off the vine, but the berries have many other applications.

“Dried berries, chocolate-covered berries, pills, powders and plants,” Kordes said. “You can even brew your own tea from goji berries, which is very common in China.”

Whatever you do with the berries, it’s unlikely you’ll be as lucky as Master Li Ching Yuen, a Chinese herbalist whose legendary longevity, while disputed, is often attributed to his diet. He ate goji berries every day. According to his 1933 obituary in the New York Times, he lived to be 256.