If you have purchased fresh lycium berries, (Only possible during the fruiting season) they will come in plastic zip lock bags to maintain their moisture and viability.
The following instructions also apply if you have picked your own berries and are wanting to ‘plant on’.
Try and spread the pulp of the berry around.
It’s a sticky business but well worth the end result.
Extracting and planting the individual seeds usually just cuts down on the viability and is needlessly time consuming.
Three parts fill a tray or pot with seed raising mix, spread the berry pulp and seed and then sprinkle seed raising mix and sand lightly over the berry to about 3mm – 5mm in depth.
If you have purchased dry seed, it will need to be soaked for at least a day before planting or germination time is extended by up to three weeks.
Then carry one as above.
Germination is usually around 7 days but will vary with soil temperature and day length.
Once they have germinated…….
The pots must not dry out so be careful, but, after they have broken the soil surface they do not like to be too wet either. We water gently once a day until they are planted on or out.
Once they have achieved their second set of leaves you can tease them apart and give them an individual pot.
Keep them reasonably protected until they have reached 15 cm in height.
They will usually only generate one stem in pots so it is best to put them out as soon as the weather allows so that they can shoot multiple stems.
watering, but also need to have some air circulation within the pot as well, which is why seed raising mix and potting mix are preferable to soil at this stage.
If the seed raise mix that you have used, holds onto the water over the period of a day, then it is possibly too dense and is retaining too much moisture for the roots to ‘breathe’.
Some coarse potting mix will help to remedy this situation, added to the seed raise mix when you transplant.
If you have purchased seedlings then overall they are a very hardy plant but they tend to ‘sulk’ a little when posted or transplanted.
Their normal sulking position is ‘drooping’, which they can easily maintain for one to two weeks.
This is not usually a problem unless you panic and keep pumping water into them.
This will drown the roots.
Partly shaded, protected from wind, frost hail etc and a little patience is all that is required.
Do not forget that they are deciduous plants and in all environments will drop their leaves completely in Autumn/Winter.