Specialty Gardening: poppy forum???, 1 by mulchmania

mulchmania wrote:
I have never tried peat moss for mulch as our climate is so dry it tends to suck moisture out of everything around it and it would blow away anyway. But that is great if it works for you!

I do use loads of green grass clippings for mulch and it works well. For starting a new poppy bed I often sow by scattering seed on the snow over the ground, which is prepared without mulching. The seeds sprout as the snow melts away. They need to stay moist while germinating and sending their first wee roots down. Drying out during that stage is the main reason people have trouble getting them to grow. Either that or burying them so they cannot sprout at all.

After the plants are big enough I mulch them. The trick with getting them to self seed in the mulch is to not have the mulch too heavy. Heavy enough to discourage weeds and hold moisture in the soil, but not too heavy for the poppies to sprout, a balancing act. Grass clippings decay quickly so a partially decayed mulch works well for sprouting the poppy seeds too. So I do not put fresh clippings on the garden in the fall.

Here is a photo of my Big Round in full bloom this past summer. I do go a bit berserk with Shirley poppies.