Um....dumb question.....if you weren't going to grow them again, why were you waiting for seeds?

Why else? To give them to friends

Karen

Ha ha, so your friends could have nasty, dead brown foliage in THEIR gardens?

Poppies seem to present us with a bad end. I just wait thru it and yank when its time.OP's dont end well either.

When friends ask, I try to accommodate.

And yanking so early in the season, then I have to replant with something else... so I don't grow them anymore.

Karen

I grow mine with lilies ,when the poppies are yanked it hardly makes a dent.

opps forgot a photo

Oh, very nice, Jo Ann!

Pretty

Karen

always love your gardens JoAnn

thanks.I always try to find a way to have what I want.

LOL, the weeds usually cover up my dead poppy foliage....

I have some peony-flowered poppy seeds (I think that's what they are called) that I've winter-sown and hope will grow - this is my first year winter-sowing so I'm a little skeptical, but like all gardeners I'm always hopeful!

Sandy, chances are that your poppies will be the first sprouts of your wintersown seeds. They sprout at very low temps. They'll do best if you transplant to the garden when tiny- like 2 sets of true leaves- before the taproot grows too long. As long as your soil isn't frozen and you can dig, it's fine to transplant poppies. They love the cold weather.

Karen

I agree with Karen.
I always direct sow annual poppies so I dont need to transplant. I sow rather heavily and thin out when there are f sets of leaves,
Its not too late to direct sow now. You would need to dig away now to find a bare spot. Scratch the soil and sow then tamp or press seeds into the ground but dont bury them.

Thanks, Karen and Jo Ann, for the good advice; I'll keep a close eye on them and get them transplanted early! Would it work to transplant into peat pots to set out later? At any rate, I have a lot more seeds so maybe I'll go ahead and direct sow some as well, we don't have all that much snow on the ground right now so it would be easy enough to get down to the ground.

I'd stick them right in the ground, but I'm not a fan of peat pots. I tried them once for wintersowing- they got moldy in rainy weather, dried out badly when not raining. Plants didn't survive.

My first poppy sprouts on 3/3/03



Karen

I've grown them in peat pots in my GH, and they did just fine in the 4" size. I tried once with the bitty ones and the pellets and they dried out too fast. They sprout quickly, tho, so if you're planning on transplanting, don't start them so soon that the ground is still frozen when it's time to set them out!

LOL, I guess I'll just see how things work out with the ones I've already sown in the jugs, I do have plenty of seeds so can try several different things (and at least now I know some of the things that are likely to go wrong!).

Karen I have the same objection with peat.
Sandy: whats the harm in going both ways if you have the seeds?

woofie said:I've grown them in peat pots in my GH, and they did just fine in the 4" size. I tried once with the bitty ones and the pellets and they dried out too fast. They sprout quickly, tho, so if you're planning on transplanting, don't start them so soon that the ground is still frozen when it's time to set them out!

I can see how the peat pots would work better in a greenhouse than for wintersown stuff. The WSown is exposed to monsoon rain, wind, etc. In a controlled environment they might be OK.

And if the ground is frozen the WSown poppies aren't likely to be sprouting and growing as they're out in the same weather/temps.

I've not direct sown poppies but I've done other things that way- larkspur, zinnias, and cosmos come to mind. It works fine but a lot of seed is lost as seedlings need to be thinned, moved, etc. And birds, chipmunks, squirrels, etc get their share of the seeds, too, so I've only done it if I have a whole lot of seeds.

Karen