(I made this for my seed giveaway. If you've grown poppies and have suggestions, post the suggestions with a pic of your grow below)
By Nektar61. for Species: Papaver somniferum.
Varieties I've grown that I love: Laruen's Grape, Queens Poppy, Afghan Izmir, Dutch Buddha.
Also good ones I've grown and liked: Hens and Chicks, Black Swan, Black Peony.
I've heard these are great but haven't grown them yet: Hindi Queen (Rani), Tasmanian pre-2009, Burma DS, Afghan, Stoker's Blue Odyssey.
There are a lot of scammers on eBay and Etsy selling ordinary grocery store condiment aisle poppy seeds as these seeds. Better is actual garden stores that sell ALL seeds, not just poppies. Also the Hippie Starfish Honey lady is great.
Some varities you can get from a normal seed supply place that seells all kinds of seeds, not just stoner seeds. Two you'll find everywhere are Laruen's Grape (excellent) and Hens & Chicks (good, and have mutant "chicks" pods, so more pod material than some poppies.)
HOW TO GROW POPPIES
COLD STRAT
Poppies need to be cold stratified (to imitate winter to get the seeds ready to grow)
Either sprinkle them on the ground in the winter right before a snow (to keep birds off them), or put them in the fridge (not freezer!), dry, over winter, or for at least a month.
Planting them on river rock (large gravel, about an inch or two big) with no barrier underneath in winter is a good plan, if you have that. The rocks will keep birds from eating them all, and just enough Sun will hit the plants per day in the Spring to wake the seeds and get them to grow high enough to get more Sun.
If you don't have that, keep them dry in the fridge over winter, then plant them early in the spring. Plant where they'll grow, they don't transplant well. If you must transplant, start them in those little peat pots that you can later put in the ground without removing the small plant.
ON SOIL, NOT UNDER SOIL
Poppy seeds need to be ON the soil, not under it like some seeds, and not on top of leaves or mulch. spread them on the soil and give a good soaking to sort of blend with the water halfway into the soil, but still with some of the seed out to touch the sunlight.
Birds will try to eat them. Think how tasty they are to us on bagels.
So stretch out gardening netting a couple inches above them. Remove that when they're about 2 inches tall. Birds won't mess with it, for fear of getting trapped. You don't need this if you plant in river rock.
If you're worried about your planted seeds getting carried away by ants, sprinkle a tiny bit of diatomaceous earth around the planting. You don't need much, just a pinch here and there. Don't breathe it, it's a fine rocky powder and will irritate your lungs, I'd wear a mask while using it.
Diatomaceous earth doesn't work when wet, so you may have to reapply it to keep ants away until your pops sprout.
If you have cats, they'll deal with mice and rats. If you pee near your poppy plants, it will sort of "mark them" as yours to wild animals, who may be less likely to come near them.
Plant in good soil that has a some loam and some sand. If in pots, put some course pumice or gravel and screen in the bottom so water doesn't wash the dirt out.
Potting soil works great.
They can grow in partial sun, or Sun for half the day or more, but do best in all day sun.
They do much better in the ground outside than in pots outside, and better in pots outside than in pots inside.
BEST to WORST:
in ground outside
in pots outside
in pots inside.
Poppies grow like weeds (in a good way) in the ground, outside.
Growing in pots can be a last resort for people living in apartments.
I grow both sometimes, a small patch in the ground, but also some plastic flower pots. The rest of my ground is so rocky it would take a tractor to make it plantable.
Using pots just increases the number of plants I can grow. But for sure, poppies grow much better in the ground.
You can use a TINY bit of fertilizer, Miracle-Gro Shake 'n Feed is great. Put it lightly (as shown on the bottle) 1.5 inches from the top of the soil, then put more soil on top.
They don't need it to start, potting soil has enough nutrients to start plants. They should only get it once they grow a bit. Don't use too much. Remember, it will feed weeds too.
I also give them a watering with diluted Cal-Mag (follow directions on the bottle) at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months. No more than that.
All that said, poppies can grow fine in good dirt with no additives. Or even bad dirt. But good dirt, or dirt with a little fert is better. Not to much fert, it will kill them or make them weak.
If using pots, keep an inch or two of space at the top so water won't run the soil (or seeds) off.
The plants need to be thinned once they start growing. It's fine to plant more than you'll need, having a lot will help prepare the soil with hormones and signal chemicals to get them to grow.
Thin them to about 1 or 2 plants per gallon of dirt, max.
If outside, give them 6 to 12 inches between plants. If you plant too many (or plant too late in the year) you'll end up with a lot of tiny plants (as short as a foot or less) with tiny pods that won't "perform" as you want.
Then can sprout in anywhere from 3 days to 28 days. Usually around 7 to 10 days.
Fewer, bigger plants is better. They can get to 3 to 6 feet depending on the variety, and how much sun they get.
Weed them as needed. Grab weeds at the base with one hand and pull with the other so you don't pull any good plants out, or any of their root.
When the plants are starting out, the first few weeks, at one point they'll fall over and look like they're dying, but that's part of the process. They will go upright soon.
Keep them damp until they're 2 inches tall, then cut back. Don't let them dry out but they don't like soaked roots. Best to water a lot, soak them, then let them get a little dry. 2 to 6 days, depending on weather.
If you plant too many in a pot, you may need to water daily the last month, or they'll wilt. If they wilt and you water them, if they're healthy they'll start righting themselves in an hour and be fully right in 8 hours.
They take about 4 months from seed to the pods being making new seeds.
Nearly 2 quarts of poppy seeds from this year's garden. There are 191,000 to 210,000 seeds per ounce of poppy seeds.
SAVING SEEDS
Don't forget to save seeds! I never slice these pods after the flowers drop, I let them go all the way until they are brown.
As to slicing, first of all, if that's seen, you can get busted. If you don't slice them, you're just growing flowers (I recommend you grow other flowers with them too, to be less obvious, and just because flowers are fun)
If you're a fiend, the whole plant contains alkaloids. Pods most, stems second most (especially near the pod), and leaves least. Don't bother with roots.
The test to see if the seeds are ready is pinch a pod. It should not yield at all. It should feel like wood, not green. Don't let them go too long though, wind and birds can open them and remove the seeds. I basically harvest pods every few days for a month each season.
Not all pods rattle, but if a poppy seed pod is brown and sounds like a baby rattle when you shake it, that one is done.
Letting the pods go until brown is also better. You'll get more alkaloids than with slicing, and you'll also get more of the good stuff and less of the ones that make you sick. Time lets the poppies use enzymes to turn trace toxic thebaine into lovely morphine.
Commercial pharmaceutical poppy fields grown legally don't have people out slicing seed pods. That's a third-world thing where labor is cheap and farm equipment is unavailable.
Commercial pharmaceutical poppy fields are allowed to go until brown. Then the whole plant is harvested with tractors, and the whole plants are processed to extract what they want.
Pick those pods, crack them open over a bowl. Save the seeds, sieve them to get out the plant matter you don't like, then store them in a mason jar with some little muslin bags of silica gel.
Dry them, then use fresh bags to store then in the fridge over the winter. Don't use heat to dry them.
Use Silica gel to seeds in a weight ratio of 4:1 weight (4 ounces of seed to every 1 ounce of silica) to dry them for a couple weeks in sealed Mason jars before the fridge.
Then throw out those bags and put in new ones at 10:1 (10 ounces of seed to every 1 ounce of silica) with the seeds in Mason jars to store over winter in the fridge (not freezer!)
Poppies produce a LOT of seeds. You can turn a teaspoon of seeds into pounds of seeds in one season.
There are 191,000 to 210,000 seeds per ounce of poppy seeds. Seeds from a small patch can weigh well more than an ounce.
My garden produced two mason jars almost full of poppy seeds. I didn't weigh them but that's many million seeds. I have a germination rate for the seeds I grow of about 1 in 30, so that's enough for years.
MAKING TEA
If you want to use the poppies for tea, now I can't recommend this, it's dangerous, but I've done it. You've been warned.
The point of this tea is not to get as close to death as you can, like some people do with heroin. The point, in my opinion, is to get a mellow, sustained, very pleasant warm buzz.
I use 3 cups (0.7 liter) of seed pods (with seeds removed), let them dry a few days (or don't, they don't shrink much in that time), then put in a blender with a lot of water and blend them on high for over a minute into slurry.
I boil this on the stove for 10 minutes. Then turn down the heat to simmer for 20 minutes.
I let this cool to about 110 degrees F (43 C) and strain it. I push a mixing spoon on it to squeeze out what I can. I save the sludge in a pot, this can be used for 1 or 2 more "flushes" (boiling again)...I usually do this after 4 or 5 hours when the original warmth in me is fading, to stretch it out to 8 hours.
This will serve 2 to 4 people, depending on the strength.
I always test a new batch by trying a little and waiting an hour to make sure I'm not on the floor from a small amount. The strength can vary a lot, not just from variety to variety, but from one plant to another. I mix all my varieties together to even it out.
But poppies are not like pot, where one plant can get 2 people high for months.
If you drink the te3a every day for 3 or so weeks, you'll have trouble sleeping (twitch) when you stop. In other words, a small habit.
I make it a point not to do more than about 4 days without a break. But I've heard if that does happen, some people use a low dose of kratom per day for a few days to wean down from that.
Don't drink this tea alone, and have Narcan on hand. And don't combine with any other drugs.
Again, I'm going to tell you NOT to drink this tea, and if you do it, it's your own responsibility.
People who've done this a lot will say I'm being over cautious, but I think you can never be too cautious with your life.
Edited by nektar61 (10/05/26 01:15 PM)
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