How to Grow Poppies

by Deltagardener

2 Materials

3 Months

Medium

I love poppies but they are not always that easy to grow from seed. Often we plant the seeds at the wrong time of year. Let's look at how we can have a beautiful poppy garden.

When we talk about poppies everyone seems to love them. Today we will look at how to grow poppies and the different kinds available. They are difficult to transplant so it's best to grow them from seed.

In zones 3-7 it's best to plant your seed in the spring and in zones 8-10 you can plant them in the fall. Fall planted seeds will bloom in late spring and spring planted seeds bloom in summer. For successive blooms plant seeds every two weeks.

Poppies are notoriously hard to transplant. If you do decide to grow them from seed, it's best to move them to the garden before they are 3″ high and with the whole root ball intact.

If you grow poppies from seed, work your soil so its nice and soft and will allow the deep tap-root to penetrate the soil. Poppies also love a well-drained soil and will not tolerate heavy wet soils.

You can also buy poppies as part of a wildflower mix which as you can see is very beautiful in the garden. Check out seed mixes to see which other flowers are added before purchasing. The orange poppies above are the popular California poppy or Eschscholzia californica which is used in areas that suffer from drought and where few other plants will grow.

There are so many types of poppies to choose from but its the annual poppies that have so much variation from singled petals to double petals, frills and no frills. There are perennial poppies to plant in the garden as well and those are often best propagated by division. For more detailed information on how to grow poppies check out my link below.

Collect seeds from spent flowers to save for

If you would like to save poppy seeds from your plants, place a paper bag over spent blooms and let the seeds drop into the bag. Each poppy seed head contains hundreds of seeds.