I have tons of seeds. Tell me what you have in exchange The double poppies are pinkish and pink/red. Very pretty. Calif poppies are yellow and are very easy to grow. I've had problems with poppy seeds germinating in this past, but certainly not this year.

Hello 'atravers! My name is mike. I was wondering how your luck was obtaining the poppy seeds posted on gardenweb. I am in need of these as well and I have many different veggie seeds including the Genovese Basil which grows to 3 feet and will grow taller if the seed pods are cut before they grow. Please e-mail me if you wish to reply to this message. pivola3@gmail.com

I don't know how California Poppies do elsewhere, but in my hot summered interior valley of Los Angeles (SFV)if you wait for the seed pods to "split" you will be way to late to "harvest" seeds, as they literally explode casting their seeds a considerable distance. The key is to wait till the pod turns from green to straw brown. Then pick the pods and but them in a paper sack, as they can still "explode". I've had many pods "go off" in my hands as I picked them. It can't hurt you, but it is startling. I usually let the pods sit for awhile in the bag and then hard open any which have not opened themselves. OK, and if you are in anydoubt if the seeds are ready for harvest, you can open some up. If the seeds are still greenish, they are still immature. They should be black. We have a sea of California Poppies at our home and they are quite beautiful. Bill

Terri, that was a good article. I wish the article had included a picture of the poppies, though. I got some seed marked "Gray-Seeded Poppy" in a bunch of seeds mailed to me as bonus in a seed trade. I have seen posts by people who say it is illegal to grow them so I'm glad to see in the article you provided the link to about "intent". I am one of those gray-haired grandmothers. Here is a picture of the poppies that grew from the seed I was sent: I thought the flowers were quite attractive. The center of the flower reminds me of a little spaceship. When the flower is done, it leaves a pod that looks to me like a little salt shaker on a stem. When the seeds have matured enough, the pod dries and shrinks back from a little scalloped "hat" to reveal holes. If you turn the pod upside down and give it a little shake, the seeds will come out like salt out of a salt shaker. They are, indeed, gray. Like the article said, I would think you could plant poppy seed from your spice rack. In the case of something like marijuana, you can get in trouble for having either the plant or the seed. So since we can buy poppy seed in any store, and I've never heard of anyone raiding somebody's spice rack, I find it a little odd that anybody's raiding someone's flower garden. Again, I suppose it would make a difference if you had an entire FIELD of them, as the article said. --Ilene