OHHHHH I have seen it.
We used to have a "Redneck picnic" served meatloaf in the shape of a groundhog. Lots of fried balogna sandwiches and jello with baby marshmellows in it.

Larkspur volunteers are pretty easy to identify in the garden I think. Unlike big ugly broadleaf weeds, their foliage is lacy and pretty.


Your best bet to establish larkspur is to get a bunch of seeds and direct sow in late summer/early fall. (Probably around Sept first for most folks). They sprout and grow, remaining green all winter

What looks like green groundcover on this round bed is actually larkspur volunteers in one of my beds in January 2010.


Karen

Can poppies be moved after the seedlings are a few inches tall?

If you are talking about annuals I usually move them in clumps when they are just germinated 2 leaf. They really dont like their roots disturbed. I move them befor the roots get long.I loose some in the clump doing this but they would have been thinned out anyway.

They really don't like being moved! I have transplanted lots of things that you aren't supposed to without losing them, but the annual poppies are very very difficult to move. Jo Ann's suggestions is probably the best, short of starting them in peat pots.

The success rate here for transplanting is thin at best.I try not to move them.
Never started annuals in pots.

We have such a short growing season here that I start nearly everything early indoors.

Thats great,wish I had better luck with seeds. Years of failure have taught me to just buy plants.
Direct sow is the best method here.

Well, Jo Ann, I do have a greenhouse, which helps. But that has its own set of problems, too. However, I could not afford to buy the plants I grow, even assuming I could find them locally.

I've wintersown them then transplanted while small. They did great.


Karen

eye treats

I initially received seed from a friend years ago, since then it has self-seeded quite well. Is this a somniferum?

Looks like somniferum to me!

thanks

We had them growing here when we moved here. I like them a lot, although they get kind of scroungy looking when they're done blooming. I can't tell from the picture how tall yours are.....some of ours get almost 5 feet tall, if they're not too crowded.

Estimate 3.5'

Same here. They were pretty while blooming in early summer. When the real hot weather came, foliage got dry and ratty looking, and they take up a sizable piece of real estate. I haven't grown them in years. I usually get a few volunteer Cali poppies each year, but just a few. They do better, and they don't become big eyesores.

Karen

All the more reason to think they're somniferums, then. That, and the pretty, frilly, lettuce-like foliage.

They do liik like somnifariums. Those are my faves because they are easy and hardy.

Found a pic of somniferums. Waiting for seeds there, foliage browning, they had blown over so I staked them- generally ugly. I've only grown them that once.



Karen