Will Goji Berry Grow in Minnesota?

The Plant

• The goji berry plant is a deciduous, rangy, 10- to 12-foot-tall shrub. It has white or purple flowers in the spring and bears small, raisin-sized berries from summer to autumn. It is self-fertile, so you don't need more than one plant to produce berries. Goji berry bushes do, however, tend to produce more and better fruit if they have the additional pollination provided by other goji bushes. Goji berry plants are self-sowing, so your patch can grow from a single plant to a hedge of plants without additional planting.

Growing Conditions

• According to the National Gardening Association, goji berries are hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 5 to 9. Minnesota ranges from USDA zones 2b to 4b, making the state's weather a little too cool for predictable success. Goji berries need a soil pH between 6.8 and 8.1. Minnesota soils tend to range from 5.0 in sandy areas to 8.1 or higher in the western and northwestern parts of the state.

Problems

• Deer like the taste of goji berries and can cause considerable damage both to ripening berries and to young plants. Deer are very common throughout Minnesota, so you should fence your goji berries. Fresh goji berries are very tender and small and must be picked by hand, not with a mechanical picker. Because they are so labor intensive, some commercial growers find that even if they can grow the berries, doing so is not profitable. Even home gardeners will find picking to be time-consuming.

Experiments

• In 2008, Koua Vang and Cingie Kong began a project to see if goji berries of the Lycium barbarum species could be grown in loamy, sandy soil in Chisago County in west-central Minnesota. They planted 600 seedlings. Though the temperatures the first winter dropped to minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit, the plants showed no winter damage. In the second year, a leaf blight, Alternaria fungus, defoliated the plants and destroyed the crop. As a result of the experiment, the project coordinators acknowledged that Minnesota's growing conditions are marginal. They recommend goji berry varieties that bloom early for planting in Minnesota. They also note that goji berries planted from seed are variable enough in quality that they cannot tolerate Minnesota's challenging growing conditions.