Learning about crops - Goji plants

In doing some reading and meandering around Pinterest, I came across the goji plant.  I'd never heard of it, but considering it produces fruit, I read more and became quite interested.  Given our garden plot doesn't allow planting of trees, we're going to buy and plant either one or two plants in pots.  We haven't decided whether we're going to take them to the plot and set them somewhere in the aisle or place them somewhere either in the back yard or on the front stoop.

Goji plants, also known as the wolfberry,  produce berries that have been described as tasting like a cross between the cranberry and cherry.  We find that to be far more appealing than ground cherries which were (accurately) described as a cross between a tomato and pineapple.  Goji plants grow up to 13' tall and 4' across, but can have their size managed through pruning.  They also can be potted which controls spreading.

Goji fruit is expensive!  In doing a little digging, I've seen prices of dehydrated goji berries between $18/lb online to $22/lb at the local MOM's today.

Growing goji

As I mentioned before, goji can get rather large, but can be potted.  If one wants to grow them in a pot, they should have pots no smaller than 5 gallons since the taproot extends up to 8" below the soil.  Water well in the first year and they can be reasonably drought tolerant later.  It likes a pH 6.8 to 8.2 with low levels of nitrogen.  They should be given something to climb on such as a trellis.  After the first year, be sure to trim their branches below 16" from the ground as they grow taller to decrease chances of fungus growth.  To encourage more growth, prune in the spring.  Few berries will be produced in the first year; yields increase in subsequent seasons.  It's recommended to use bird netting to deter non-human snacking.

They can be grown in a wide variety of climatic zones from 3 to 10.  Preferring full sun, they can handle temperatures as low as -5 F.

Although there are no recommended companion plants, it's recommended to keep them away from potatoes and tomatoes to prevent the spread of blight diseases.

Ripe berries will be a deep red with a shiny skin.  They should readily fall off in your hand when you try to pick them.  Be careful when harvesting as they will crush easily.

Nutrition Information

Although there are many sources claiming nutritional benefits of goji consumption, finding reputable sources of information has found to be a challenge.  While I hate quoting wikipedia, it's the best I've found.

In 100 grams of goji berries, 8-10% RDA of calcium, 24% potassium, 100% iron, 18% of both iron and zinc, 91% selenium, 100% vitamin B2, and a significant amount (percentages vary from 32% to 163%) of Vitamin C.  There are also a number of amino acids, poly and monosaccharides.

2013 Plot Layout

Since I've inputted the plot box layout, I also included where things were planted for the 2013 growing seasons.  This will help me implement crop rotation.

Planning for 2014 - a blank slate

I have a bug.  I tried to fight it, but it's there.  It's given me an itch and I have to scratch it.

It's the need to plan for this year's garden. (Truth be told, I tried to write this in the way of the infamous SNL skit regarding "A fevah" but couldn't figure out how to pull it off.)

To start, I was inspired by something that Kathy from Skippy's Vegetable Garden does; she has her garden layouts on Powerpoint. I was going to use AutoCAD, but think that using Powerpoint is probably easier and certainly more attractive.  Thankfully, I'd already plotted out where all my boxes are at the plot on graph paper when planning the layout two years ago so it was simply a matter of inputting the info into the computer.

I was sure to record are the cardinal directions.  Ordinarily, I wouldn't care overmuch about it, however, this year I'm planning on planting the cucumbers to grow in the shade provided by the watermelon trellis.  I've read (and will post details later) that cucumbers won't grow female flowers when temps are consistently over 95 degrees.  My hope is that shade will help avoid the issues of past years.  By orienting the trellis properly (as much as I can, anyway), I hope to maximize the shade I can give the cucumber plants.

Anyway, here's what the "blank" plot currently looks like.  Some boxes are either populated by stuff that's overwintered and some can't readily be moved (like the runner beans).

Once I've finalized a layout for this year, I'll post it separately so I can better track for future years.

A Cold Frame for the Raised Planter Box

I made an elevated planter box back in March 2013 (hard to believe that's almost a year ago!) to go on our front porch.  We planted some spinach back in early October to see if it'd produce anything and while we haven't gotten any spinach out of them, those things are still hanging on even through some pretty nasty cold weather.  An idea came to mind about a month ago to try to make a cold frame cover for the box.

I wasn't sure what to do for a while.  I considered making row cover tubing out of PVC, but didn't like that the elevation would be constrained around the sides of the hoops.  I also had done some reading about creating shade for cooler weather plants to try to grow them in warmer weather. I needed a means of providing that shade even though that box gets filtered sun from a large maple tree next to the house.  In the end, I decided to make a frame out of 2x2's purchased from Community Forklift that is designed to be tall enough to accommodate lettuce greens.  I will, of course, remove the cold frame plastic once the weather warms up.

Because this was my first of two raised planters I made, I made some mistakes. Most notably, I didn't allow enough room in the leg slots for the box-side wood to swell.  That led to the one-by side pieces raising ~1/2" above the top surface of the legs as well as swelling and width-wise creating cracks in the legs.  You can see some of the results of the swelling in the picture above.  I used my circular saw to cut those side pieces flush with the leg tops.

All in all, it was a good Saturday project and will, hopefully, allow us to have a productive spring crop.  I'm anticipating lettuce and radishes.

Shhhhhh! We're sleeping!

It's the quiet time in between growing seasons yet I'm feeling stirrings for spring.  Maybe it's because it's 50 degrees and a little rainy, but it has Wifey and I looking forward to this year.

The seed catalogs have come and we've looked through a number of things to see what we'd like to experiment with.  I'll post a "final" plant list later on, but right now we know we're doing:

• Basil
• The same two kinds of tomatoes
• The same two kinds of peppers (although less of the cayenne)
• Radishes
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• The same two kinds of beans

Speaking of cucumbers, I'm working on a blog post to try to learn (and share) a bit about growing them.  Particularly useful since I've had no success with them to this point.  I think it's because of elevated temperatures after doing some reading.

This year, we're trying to branch out and do some more cool weather crops.  Things like lettuce and greens are on the agenda for this year.  To that end, I'm working on designing and building a frame to go on top of the elevated garden box I built last year for our front porch.  We have spinach that's still managing to survive through the winter.  The idea is for this frame to mount to the top of the box to provide structure for plastic to create a bit of a cold frame and also which can be sturdy enough to support some plywood for shade in the summer.  I'm hoping that by providing some shade for that box, we can grow some cooler weather crops (lettuce, namely) even when it's hotter.

I have a rough idea of what I want to build and even bought some 2x2's from Community Forklift for the project.

Continuing the theme of planning for this year, I'm going to try a computerized layout for the plot.  Kathy, from the Skippy's Vegetable Garden blog, does a PowerPoint layout every year for her plot.  In the last few years, I've just done one on quadrille graph paper but the engineer in me really sees the appeal of having a layout that can be uploaded to this blog that I can look at from numerous locations and changed on the fly.