Does anyone grow POPPIES ?

I want to grow more Poppies. I am interested in Papaver Rhoeas - the Corn Poppy - The Poppy that was made famous from Flanders Field in France. The beautiful Red Poppy. Does anyone grow this ?
Does this Poppy reseed itself ? If anyone has grown this poppy, please respond.
Thanks.

Just saw this. From my experience, all poppies are grown the same way.

This is a little late, but I'll add my 2 cents. I have grown the California poppies from seed and yes, they do reseed year after year, blooming in the middle of the summer.
A few years ago, my garden club was designing a float for our town's 4th of July parade, theme was classic movies so we chose the Wizard of Oz poppy scene. We all planted the red poppy seeds in pots in mid April, and prayed! Low and behold, most of them were blooming on the 4th of July! After the parade I did bring the pots back to my garden to finish enjoying the blooms and I put the pots in the middle of my garden, hoping they would drop seeds, and after the blooms were spent and seeds were ripe I put the cut stalks and laid them down on the ground in my garden, but I never did get any red poppies from seeds. Here's a photo, the marigolds were the yellow brick road

[quote="NJIrisGuy"]I want to grow more Poppies. I am interested in Papaver Rhoeas - the Corn Poppy - The Poppy that was made famous from Flanders Field in France. The beautiful Red Poppy. Does anyone grow this ?
Does this Poppy reseed itself ? If anyone has grown this poppy, please respond.

If this is the poppy you are asking about - yes I grow them.

I grow them too ad yes, they reseed.

Yes - Oh yes - they reseed.

Beautiful!
I have these at my Community Garden Plot - all self sown from last year's plants, even after one of the gardeners borrowed my seed pods for craft projects. Here they are a little scorched.

Brenda, I feel my poppies have more of an orangey red than all the pictures I see which was disappointing to me. Your's looks like a nice blood red. How is it in person?

Loretta,

In person - per you question - mine are RED. I try to keep them that way by taking out the less desirable colors. I'm sure yours were BRILLIANT when blooming at their peak and at first I thought they were the Ornamental Poppy. Mine are more single petaled.

I also have this poppy with I call my "Mayme Poppy" as I got the start from my grandmother years ago. That's how they reseed over time (like heirloom) and I'm talking years. I always feel that if I have at least one poppy to bloom and seed, I will always have poppies. This year I saved seed from this one (below) and made Lemon Poppyseed Bread and boy was it yummy. Guess they are breadseed poppies.

I just got back from the city part where I spread some of their seed next to building where I help maintain the landscape, in hopes of some spectacular blooms (work free - as in smarter not harderr) next spring. If so, that will be quite the surprise.

Keep right on gardening!

Beautiful, Brenda! Your Mayme Poppy is gorgeous!
Unfortunately, my scorched poppies are always that orangey red color - even when fresh. It was a bonus pack from Bakers Creek. They were nice enough for the community garden among all the vegetables though.

Nice comment - thank you. Yes, I'm sure your poppies were a show stopped among veggies.

My Maybe Poppies as I referred aren't near as pretty now. At present they are all dried up. After bloom - I had to hand pull bunches of them out because I had them in a new perennial garden. Then some of the others in another bed have dried and today I used the weedeater and downed a bunch of them.

Always something to do in the gardens. What fun!

For me Shirley poppies are reasonably easy to grow. There is a strange way I prep the seed and sow it to get it to germinate. I pop the seed packet into the freezer for about 3 days and then I take it out to thaw for about 3 extra days. Then I take a 5" tall plastic disposable drinking cup they use at parties and poke 2 holes at the very bottom of the cup using a Xacto knife. Not from underneath, but from both sides of the cup. Then I fill it up with fine compost or potting soil, preferably filtered from larger particles found in it. Then I gently level the surface of the soil with some type of lid. A lid from a large orange prescription pill bottle will surely help! Then I use a very small bathroom cup and pour a little bit of seed into the cup from the packet. And then I gently sprinkle the tiny little seed onto the surface of the soil. Next, I use the same bathroom cup to lightly cover the seed by sprinkling extra filtered compost or potting soil from it. I then, level the soil surface again, gently, using the same lid from that orange pill bottle. Afterwards, I take a wide container, a cool whip container will do, and then I place the large plastic cup containing the soil and sown seed into the container. Lastly, I grab a small watering can and water the container to about 1.5 cm covering the bottom of the cup and set the container under a desk lamp, waiting at least 1 hour before I turn on the lamp containing the fluorescent light. The reason being is that the water will soak up from the 2 holes on the very bottom, through tiny air pockets in the soil, all the way to the surface, assuring that the seed has adequate moisture. I use a bendable desk lamp to adjust it so the seed can get proper light in order to sprout. Germination usually takes 4-7 days!

Here are some pics of some Shirley Poppies I've grown several years ago.

-Tony

Thanks Tony- I may try this next spring, I had little luck with sowing them out in the garden.
Question- the water in the cool whip container-does it all go up into the soil or is there a bit left?
Do you water them any more before germination?
Do you cover them with any plastic wrap?

For Flanders poppies all I do is direct sow them (toss them) in the fall/winter and they come up and bloom in the spring. They like the cool weather, it's the heat that kills them.

Pistil, the water soaks up until the soil has reached it's moisture retaining capacity. Some water may be left over, when it can all be sucked up as well, depending upon the amount of water added. The soil is more damp at the bottom than it is atop, due to the force of gravity! And no, overhead watering is not necessary and I would not recommend it, and plastic cover is also not needed. Just whenever the water is soaked up completely, add more to the height I'd suggested, 15mm. Good Luck:-)

-Tony

This message was edited Jul 8, 2016 2:04 PM

I also complicate my poppy sowings. Direct sowing never gave me good results at home nor did I ever get a self sown from the few that did flower (2). My reseeder above is at the community garden.
I use vermiculite and or perlite and I wet it with water that has been boiled and cooled so that it is just damp but wrung out, so to speak. Then I recycle water bottles. I slice them in half or so at the waist. The plastic is so thin now, it is very easy compared to years ago when I first tried winter sowing. I try to do it at an indent so the top will eventually fit into the bottom. I fill with the damp vermiculite and then sow a couple of poppy seeds, put on the top with the cap still on. I do this in winter or early spring when it's still cold. I leave them in a tray on my covered porch out of direct sun. It could be shade but the squirrels mostly leave my pots on my porch alone. When they are ready, they sprout. I use boiled water and the vermiculite so they don't rot.

Here's an opium poppy "anonymous," Papaver somniferum, I grew from seed I bought in bulk amounts from the grocery store.

-Tony

Very pretty and it makes a nice avatar!

Thanks a lot, Loretta:-)

This is an old thread, but if you are still out there ToneBone or Loretta, do the poppies you seed in the cups transplant ok? Is there a secret to that part of it? Like transplant them before they get too big?

I didn't have trouble transplanting. I seperated them when small and put them in individual pots. When I plant the potted plants into the ground, I just take all the soil with the plant. You can always cut each starter pot down to one and not disturb the soil at all.

The temp here today is 63 (what a treat), so I opted for a little walk around in the yard looking to see if I had any poppies. Very few and from what I have seen, it looks like the deer are nipping on what is there. I usually depend on them to volunteer, but I have have to help them out a tad OR just maybe they have not all came up yet. I have never transplanted poppy - except for an ornamental and it lived a few years, then I think I killed it with some wood ashes.

Hi Cindy,
I just happened to come across this thread and saw your comment from the other day. Don't know if I'll be much help to you, but....
I grow my own Poppies from seed under grow lights in the cellar, and I leave them in their 16oz styrofoam cups until ready to plant. I set the Poppy trays outside around the middle of April on the Patio under a long wooden bench (w/slats for the seating area) and that's where they stay until I'm ready to plant or give away to friends/family.
I grow Orientals and the annuals that reseed.
Here's a couple of pics from late March 2016.

This message was edited Feb 8, 2017 2:08 PM

I'm going to start my poppies in cups also b

Mine transplant very well. I use extreme caution not to break most of the roots when taking them out. I thin to the strongest, most uniform seedlings, then I let them grow 2-3 leaves. I then scoop the seedlings using a fresh, unused plastic spoon and loosen the dirt ball and pull apart every seedling by the leaf to separate them. Then I put them in small individual containers. When they outgrow them, I Transplant them to larger containers. After that, they go in the ground.

Tony

Thank you all for sharing. I am will to try as I really want poppies in my garden.

Here's my opium poppy that just blossomed.

I sent an email to Chilterns Seeds, since they were advertising poppy seeds this late. They said they can be sowed until late May. (In the UK, of course!)

Very pretty! Mine are still seedlings.

Had to rotate the image.

I understand this thread is quite old, but thought I would try nonetheless. I plan to grow both Papaver somniferum (Lauren’s Grape) and Papaver rhoeas and would like to know whether these two species will cross-pollinate if in close proximity. Thanks.

I grew them together and I never got a cross out of the few that came in the years following.

Thanks!