Our family have been growing gogi for over 20 years. There are 2 different varieties of Lycium barbarum, and they have rather different growth pattern. The large leave variety is grown primarily for its delicious leaves which is usually used as a soup vegetable. In my garden, zone 15, it has providing us with enough large leaves almost all year around. The branches is almost cut down to the ground during harvesting to stimulate new growth and prevent mildewing. However in mother's house in the hot central valley,zone 14, once the weather really warms up, the leave become rather small. It will produce the berries if you do not cut down the vines. However it does produce too many berries. The second variety is literally named the small leaf gogi will produces rather small and narrow leaves most of the year, and the leaf is too small for practical cooking purpose, But it produces immense amount of berries, and here again its growth pattern is different in the Stockton area. The berries is much more plentiful and much larger in my mother's garden inspite of fact that both plants came originally from the same plant over 10 years ago. My suggestion is to grow and use both varieties. For around a dollar in an Asian market you can buy a bunch, strip away the leaves, and make enough cutting for 100 plants or you can get a bunch from a Chinese friends since it is the most common and easiest plant to grow. I have seen it grown in sandy soil in San Francisco. I grow it in a rather heavy clay soil. The berry variety is a little different story. I have been sucessful in making many cuttings, but it is much slower than with the other variety. The fresh seeds are rather easier to start, but you will have a long wait before you can harvest enough berries to consume. If you can afford it I would suggest buying it rooted from a nursery. A pound of dried seeds can be purchased in most Asian market for a few dollars.

Hi Celandra- I'm not Carla, but let me chime in here to say that while you can plant two trees in one hole it's not nearly as much fun as grafting!! If you want scions for apples, pears, cherries, grapes, or plums send a SASE (two stamps) to Nick Botner, Spearheart Farm and Orchard, 4015 Eagle Valley Road, Yoncalla, OR 97499. (I've posted this information so often that I worry that people will think I work for Nick. I don't.) Nick's list is pretty big, so it's a good catalog. Some people have intimated that a certain number of his varieties may be mislabelled. I can't speak to that, but feel it should be mentioned. It doesn't matter very much to a rank amateur like myself, but a commercial grower could be set back by it for sure. Also worth noting: if you have neighbors within say, a quarter mile who are growing a different variety of the same fruit that you are growing there may not be any pollination issues. Around here there's apples, pears, apricots and plums in just about every block or two. Good luck, Mark

Sooooo...what am I looking at for the future. A 'coral bark' bush? ===>>> yes.. unless you start removing leaders.. select the best.. and start removing some.. but since every leaf is a food making machine.. i might not take them all at once ... IMHO.. coral bark is foo foo.. i lost one.. and my best guess is that the red bark cant handle my z5 winter ... something about red bark holding more winter sun generated heat.. as compared to the standard gray ... but that is all in my head .. as you suspect.. USUALLY understock would be the standard green species ... but it wouldnt surprise me that someone may have come up with 'rooting' maples ... and if so.. then suckers would be true to form ... i dont know what to tell you on the poplar ... w/o a pic ... another of my unsubstantiated theories.. is that trying to grow a large tree on a rotting wreck of the old tree.. usually leads to the new tree falling down ... rotting wood needs water, and sucks it up like a sponge .. and steals nitrogen while rotting.. so trying to grow a vigorous plant in the middle of it all may not be the best circumstances for long term success ... [and yeah.. i know weird things happen out in virgin forests .. but they wont kill you when they fall] ... you said: If you had a Yellow Poplar where the body died but a sucker came off the base, would you replace the tree with, oh, say, a 5 or 6 foot new one, ==>>> no i would get rid of any poplar.. and plant just about ANYTHING ELSE ... and that would include a tulip tree .. which is not really a poplar .... but still has many of the problems of a poplar ... man you did some stream of consciousness.. lol ... i think i got most of the questions ... i would take at least two of the trunks off the maple now.. and maybe another in fall ... and there is no real reason you might not like a multi-trunked plant.. rather than a single trunk ... but too many would not be pleasing to the eye.. IMHO ... ken

I live in West Tn. Two years ago, at a Chinese restaurant where I live, the Chinese lady who owned the place was sitting at a table next to mine, picking leaves off a pile of switches and putting them into a pot to cook. After watching her for a few minutes and wondering what plant the switches were cut from, I noticed the tiny thin thorns adorning the stems as they were being exposed in the picking. Wow! I asked the lady "Is that Goji?" Her face lit up and she asked, "You know Goji?" I told her that I'd been resurrecting seeds from dried berries for about 3 years, but the resulting seedlings consistentky only grew about three inches and died. She took a bunch of the now bare stems and rolled them up in newspaper, handed them to me and told me to put them in water to root OR stick them into damp ground where I wanted them to grow. I took them home and put all of them into planters on my porch. They all immediately started sprouting new leaves. Last year, several put out new plants from the roots a few inches away from the parent plant. Some of them flushed with blooms in late October, just before frost got them. An ice storm this Winter broke off a few twigs, and when I was cleaning up around them a couple of weeks ago, the severed twigs lying under the leaf cover on the soil were putting out roots and tiny new leaves, so they got stuck into a planter of their own. The parent cuttings have grown to almost 6 feet. I'm hoping they will bloom sooner this year. The soil is probably a bit too acidic. Does anyone know the best way to adjust the ph for gojis, as well as how (or whether) to prune them?