So many Poppies (Papavers) - NOT Puppies ;)

[Mitzi]

In my London garden I had a yellow/orange flower bed and desperately wanted some Welsh poppies for it. Collected seeds from ones I saw self-seeded in various places, even bought some seed. Would it grow? Would it ****.

Moved up to Yorkshire and in my garden here there are loads of the things, happily seeding themselves all over the place, including between paving slabs. Doesn't seem as if I'm going to have to do anything to keep them going. Both gardens were on clay, although London was alkaline and Yorkshire is acid.

I love oriental poppies (especially the white-flowered ones) but I have a tiny garden and they have such a very short flowering season that I'm honestly not sure that I can justify the room for them.

What I really, really crave is one of the gorgeous blue himalayan meconopsis, e.g. betonicifolia. Couldn't have them in London as they need acid soil. Maybe I'll try them here, although they're famous for being difficult. Maybe I'll just broadcast sow in the flower beds and cross my fingers, as the more I fuss over them, the more upset i will be if they don't succeed.

[Small pumpkin]

Edit: I did sow some bread seed poppies as well but they also decided not to play. I might as well throw those in the meadow patch

I tried growing those this year as well and got nothing. I thought it was because they were a year old ( brought in 2014/ sown 2016 ). I tried 3 time March,April & May until all seeds were gone. Still nothing. Very disappointing, I was looking forward to using home grown poppy seeds.

[Small pumpkin]

Sorry to disappoint you, SP, but that's all I have I updated the list last night - but I have lots of varieties of some - if that makes it more impressive

Maybe, just maybe, I'll sow a different poppy in each of the ?30 beds and see what comes up. Or I'll throw all the seeds in a bag, mix them up and scatter the lot.

I like the different poppy in every bed idea

[Mitzi]

I don't know specifically about bread seed poppies but the papaver rhoeus (spelling?) and somniferum seem to grow best after the soil has been disturbed - hence the poppies covering Flanders Fields after all the shelling and tunnelling of WW1 disturbed all the soil. In my previous garden I had lots of poppies but they gradually died out over a number of years whilst the soil was undisturbed (mainly shrubs & perennials which didn't get much maintenance) but then when I dug over the whole bed, the following spring thousands of poppies appeared, from the seed which had been lying dormant for years.

So I recommend that where you have scattered poppy seeds and nothing grew, get out there now and turn the soil over, then next spring you will have a glorious blaze of colour.

[Mitzi]

Reading this makes me want to grow papaver somniferum again:

https://philipstrange.wordpress.com/...ds-of-england/

Of course, I wouldn't harvest them...

I haven't seen them growing in this country, but when I was in France last June I saw vast fields of pale pinky-lilac flowers. Didn't know what they were at the time, took some blurry photos (from a moving bus,) and subsequently came to the conclusion that they were opium poppies.

There's also this cautionary tale about poppyseed bread:

https://philipstrange.wordpress.com/...py-seed-bread/