The Elusive Poppy

I won’t bother you with some drawn out story by an annoying blogger. I just want to show you growing poppies without an in ground garden IS possible. I dreamt of it for years and finally hit that goal today.

— But meg, I’ve seen your gardens before why not plant there? I’ve never really been in 100% control, or known I would have that spot the following year (allotment garden), and never had outdoor space at my apartments till this year. Also now living in zone 7a (Nashville) I could do some winter sowing and reap the benefits by mid-may.

This is the container I started with. I took ALL of my poppy varieties, and sprinkled them around. Just wanted to see what did the best. I made sure it had good soil, and sprinkled the poppy seeds around and patted my hand over them and just slightly watered them in.

Then they sprouted magically! So… at some point I ended up with what you can see on the right hand side. Actually, mostly the bread seed variety did well at first, but when I thinned them out I ended up with mostly the Shirley/Icelandic types.

Then they kept growing!

Also the mint was growing (that’s ok, this is it’s designated container, and we just let it live and cut it back STRONG as much as possible).

And then this happened about a month ago? Mid April 2021. I was so excited, I also never have successfully gotten a poppy seedling this large (hello meg, when the packet says don’t transplant, or doesn’t transplant well, they mean it lol). So with that in mind, I had no clue how long it would take to go from bud to bloom. Now I know! I could see the bright color popping through last week which was exciting! I knew it was a matter of days, and this morning something caught my eye when I got up, a little pop of neon, and I rushed out. Grabbed it out of the wind, found my butane and seared the ends. Something you are supposed to do to poppies, so they don’t leak gooeyness and then die in their vase. You can also do it in boiling water if you haven’t been gifted a hand torch for cooking like myself.

And there you have it, Meg’s first poppy- due to mild winters, but enough for stratification, a good balcony container, some good love and care, and straight luck. The elusive poppy.