"acai" is the fruit of a palm tree, the cabbage palm. Goji berry is "Goji berry". It loves England, soi it's ghances for Phoenix are slim. It's a high-humidity plant.

Welcome to the forum, it's good to have you here. It looks like you may be a plant pioneer judging from the lack of replies. Good for you! I'm sure I'm not the only one who would love to hear of your experiences with them, can you share? I've heard a ton about the berries, but not much about the plant, especially in the desert southwest. Take care and welcome again, Grant

The only thing with taking seeds from dried berries from places like Bulb Barn is the berries are not always naturally dried. If they were dried in an oven, that would reduce the seed viability to the point you might not get viable seed. Not saying it doesn't work, but it's no guarantee you will get anything growing. Another thing to consider is the berries might not have been grown in a similar climate so the seedlings may not be hardy. It wouldn't hurt to mulch them just in case. I buy bunches of the stems from the supermarket in the early summer. I use the leaves and shoots for soup, then root the remaining stems. At a few dollars a pound you can get tons of cuttings. Within three weeks they are well rooted and sell relatively well. I usually transplant them, wait another week for new growth, then sell them in bulk to someone who retails potted plants. The plus to my method is I know the grower and know that the plants where the stems are harvested from are hardy to Ontario.

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?