If you’re planting goji berries in your garden, let’s be honest: you’re doing it for those delicious, vibrant red-orange superfoods! While the wolfberry shrub itself is okay to look at, it’s not exactly a showstopper without its fruit. It can be super frustrating when your plant refuses to bloom or produce berries. If you’re staring at a stubborn shrub, here are a few reasons why that might be happening.
It All Starts with the Right Variety
There are actually several different varieties of goji berries out there. Most of the heavy hitters come from Asia, where they’ve been bred specifically for high yields. These days, you can find great cultivars at local nurseries, too. However, if you accidentally end up with a wild variety or a “wildling” offset, you might find it never blooms or fruits at all. To save yourself the headache, make sure you’re buying a named, cultivated variety. Do that, and you’ll be looking at a beautiful harvest in no time.
Patience is Key: Your Plant Might Just Be Too Young
Goji berries aren’t usually “instant gratification” plants. Generally, they need to be about three years old before they start putting out flowers and fruit. If your shrub is still a baby, just give it some time to mature. Interestingly, if you’re growing your goji berry in a pot, it might actually bloom a year earlier (around year two). It also depends on how the plant started: shrubs grown from cuttings usually flower much sooner than those started from seeds.
Location and TLC (or Lack Thereof)
Sometimes, the environment is the culprit. If your goji isn’t happy, it’s not going to produce. Keep an eye out for these common issues:
- A bad neighborhood (not enough sunlight or too much wind exposure).
- Heavy, compacted clay soil.
- “Wet feet” (standing water) or, conversely, letting it get bone-dry.
- Pruning too aggressively or at the wrong time of year.
Now, you definitely *should* prune your wolfberry regularly—otherwise, it’ll try to take over your entire backyard! But if you get too “Edward Scissorhands” on it and cut it back too hard, you might accidentally snip off the blooming potential for the season.
Finally, watch out for over-fertilizing. If you use a fertilizer that’s too high in nitrogen, you’ll get a massive, leafy green bush that grows like crazy but never produces a single flower. Stick to a balanced approach, and let the plant do its thing!
