Poppy 'Black Paeony' purple 1 m² - Flower seeds

Poppy seed requires no prior treatment. Seedlings do no transplant well as they have a very fragile root. Best is to sow very thinly! Sowing Indoors, March.
In the garden, April-May - or in September!

Sow some seed every 3 weeks or so and you will have the flowers around for longer.

There are 3 ways to sow:

1. Indoors, it's easiest in a propagator for on the window-sill, or in the cold-frame. Fill pots with fine seeding compost and only one seed per pot. Cover with a max. 0.5 cm soil, press lightly down and sprinkle with water. Heat will do the rest. Plant out from mid-May. Stand in a cooler spot if they get too big before the weather is suitable for planting out - this will hold them back a bit.
2. Sow in the garden, preferably in full sun, from end April through May, and in September. Loosen the soile with a fork to at least 30cm deep. Draw a straight furrow and label the row. Mix the seed with fine sand and sow very thinly along the row between thumb and forefinger. Cover with a max. of 0.5 cm, press carefully down and sprinkle with water. Extra rows at 20 cm apart.
3. Sow thinly but widely directly where you want them to grow. Garden or pots. Cover with a max. of 0.5 cm, press carefully down and sprinkle with water. It is not really possible to transplant them but you can thin the seedlings out if they grow too close together.

The seed will germinate in 7-14 days. Young seedlings are susceptible to frost so do protect them with some garden fleece if it is forecast. Late seedlings (September) will form a tap root which is fairly hardly, so while the leaf above ground will be lost over the winter, the plant will shoot from this tap root again in the spring. This plant looks best sown (or planted) in groups.
 

Water extra during dry periods, keep the bed weed-free and these poppies will thrive. Fairly undemanding, they do not like to stand in the wet. They will even do well in poor soil. Flowering These will flower June-August. If sown later in the year, they will flower in May.

Once in bloom, it is a good idea to remove overblown flowers to encourage reflowering. Leaving the seed pods on the plant also looks attractive. They will keep on developing the seed in the 'pod' and they look natural in dried flower arrangements too.

The poppies themselves also look lovely in a bouquet! When you can just see the colour of the petals, cut the stems with a sharp knife. Lovely in a summery bouquet!

Opium Poppies are annuals, frequently used to add its gorgeous colours to the garden! It is of course one of the Papaveraceae.

This Papaver somniferum is very striking with its gorgeous coloured blooms.

The original variety is actually responsible for the production of opium in Afghanistan.