A Few Facts About Growing Poppies
For the most part, growing poppies is fairly simple. Most can be grown from seed, in fact that is the preferred way to start most varieties. If you browse the web, it seems that every other web site deals with growing opium poppies. We know where opium comes from, poppy fields in Afghanistan mostly, but also in the flower gardens of America to be brutally honest.
Don't let this put you off. Technically, when you grow most any variety of poppy, you're growing a controlled substance, which we all know is illegal. Heck, even when you purchase poppy seed buns from the bakery and take them home, you're in possession of a controlled substance (the seeds, not the buns). That's also illegal. However, you're unlikely to get busted for having a beautiful flower garden which includes poppies. You really have to be growing them such that it appears you're interested in more than pretty flowers, to risk getting in any trouble.
If you do happen across a site about growing poppies, which focuses on the opium side of the picture, you really haven't stumbled across anything all that exotic. The poppy is easy to grow, no matter for what purpose. Let's focus on the flower garden aspect.
There's a huge number of different varieties or cultivars of poppies, and they come in all colors of the rainbow, and can be small plants only a few inches high, with small delicate blossoms, or the very large Oriental poppies, with their large and spectacular blossoms.
A Barrel Full Of Colors - If you have a large container, such as half of an oak whiskey barrel, sitting in a sunny location, fill it with soil and sprinkle a pack of mixed poppy seeds in the soil. The seeds only have to be covered with a fraction of an inch of soil, or just lightly rake them into the soil. After a couple of months you'll have a barrel full of brilliant colors, which will likely last until frost, and for some varieties of poppy, well beyond the first frost. About the only rule to be followed, besides keeping them watered, and giving them fertilizer every 4 or 6 weeks, is dead heading. Most varieties will continue to produce blooms if kept dead headed, as if they are bound and determined to produce seeds. Towards the end of the growing season you can let some plants go to seed. If you leave the plants alone, they'll seed themselves, and you'll have another barrel full of color the next year.
Poppy Varieties - The California poppy is very easy to grow. It will bloom from mid summer to fall, especially when dead headed. The California poppy seeds itself easily, can become quite invasive at times, and best planted in a part of the garden where its spreading habit isn't going to cause a problem. California poppies typically are orange or apricot in color, but there are some beautiful fiery red, buttermilk, and white-colored poppies as well. Another favorite is the Lady Bird Flanders poppy, which gained fame in the World War I poem, In Flanders Fields. Other fine choices for growing poppies include the Iceland poppy varieties, and the Shirley poppy varieties.
Growing Oriental Poppies - One type of poppy deserving special notice is the Oriental poppy. These are the very large plants with stunningly large and beautiful blooms. In the poppy world, the Oriental poppy is the 800-pound gorilla. It's somewhat of a space hog, and not a variety of poppy you plant in with a mix of other varieties. As far as growing poppies is concerned, the Orientals are almost to be regarded as a specimen plant, and every garden should have one or two. If you purchase a seedling, get a small one. Oriental poppies have deep tap roots and usually don't transplant well, especially once they mature. Most poppies come back year after year by seeding themselves. The Oriental poppy can also, but usually grows as a perennial. An Oriental poppy plant will often grow larger each year, and bloom much of the summer, typically with 4 to 6 blossoms at any one time.
Enjoy a selection of poppy plants in your flower garden, whether planted in mass, in a barrel or container, or singly as specimen plants.