About

American Goji is a blog about growing goji in America.  I am fanatical about the goji plant.  I don't really eat that many goji berries, although they can be delicious.  It is an excellent food also, high in protein and other beneficial phyto-nutrients which are generally beneficial for human health.

Goji is an excellent plant because it can survive in very extreme situations, like deserts, which minimal inputs and it can be an effective source of protein for humans or livestock.  The berries are high in nutrients and in beta-carotene, which can be used to add color and flavor to chicken eggs, for example.  The leaves may also make an effective livestock fodder for peoples, or groups of people, that live in, or near the desert.

In places where the desert has begun to advance on the non-desert areas nearby, goji can be used to halt the advance and to increase plant protein availability, which are often scarce in those areas.

When goji is grown (or attempted to be grown) in places with fertile soil, there are often many cultivation issues, but when it is grown on marginal or low-quality soils, it thrives and slowly develops a healthy topsoil if properly managed.

We are in a drought in California, and it's pretty extreme.  Water is becoming more and more scarce and so I am also experimenting with growing indoors and under artificially augmented light (reduced sunlight augmented with LED lighting).  Controlling growth cycles by adding artificial lighting has the potential to produce berries at any specific time in areas that lack a hard winter freeze.

It's a very interesting plant and the more I learn about it, the more excited I am about the possibilities for people living in arid areas with reduced ability to produce their own protein.  For people living in tropical areas with plenty of water, Moringa is my other passion, but I believe that for now, goji is where my attention is going.  I am propagating, breeding and producing several different strains of commercial and non-commercial varieties for various purposes and intend to share as much information as I can with the general public while producing plants and seeds for general sale.

Goji tolerates high soil salinity, low water availability and poor soils.  It is being used successfully around the world to generate crop income in impoverished areas and to reduce soil erosion while building top-soil.  It may also have usefulness in reducing chemical run-off from soils destroyed by non-sustainable mining practices in various parts of the world.  This has the potential to increase quality of life for many human beings.

If we can plant 3 trillion trees in our lifetime, then we can get the planet out of carbon debt and the weather will have a greater likelihood of returning to normal.  Also, 3 trillion plants has the potential to feed some of the billions of underfed children that are going to arrive on our planet sometime in the near future.  Having the ability and the capacity to feed massive populations of people in the world in a sustainable manner is a key to the long-term survival of ourselves.