I'm not going to ws larkspur but am going to do a few poppies and lupine. I will hold back some poppy seeds to direct sow in the early spring as that is what is recommended. The lupine is a perennial and by ws'ing, I hope it might bloom the first year. Since I have so many lupine seeds, I may just scatter some this fall to see what happens.

The poppies I did ws were too crowded. Once I set them in the ground, they fought for survival to the detriment of all and didn't take the transplant well even though I dug just deep enough to gently set the contents of the jug HOS in it. The ones from those self sowed and were much nicer the following year.

So poppies should be sowed very sparingly or thinned out according to my experience. On another thread you can see how the single fluke poppy, well I sowed it in a jug in the early spring, how big it got with no competition. I didn't know what it was until I saw the nodding buds. It's still blooming in the jug which I set out in more sun.

I haven't had much luck with larkspur yet, they don't do well in hot, dry conditions, but love the foliage and dark blue flowers.

Direct sow larkspur in fall. My volunteers are already covering the ground, I need to cull most of them.

Karen

My Valueseeds 'Dwarf Larkspur' didn't germinate either direct sown or winter sown in container.

The seeds were really hard...are they very hard when fresh fallen off plants or get that way after drying?

I'm going to order regular Larkspur seed from another vendor this year and hope I get some germination.

If seed I get is also rock hard would soaking it a bit help soften up the seed coat?

Can't believe I can't grow what seems to be one of the easiest seeds for most people.

I'm sowing Poppy seeds in containers this year. Sprinkled too many last year but they got covered with leaves, maybe washed away, covered by spring bulb foliage or some other occurrence I can't pinpoint. I let the few that germinated in another area go to seed but will have a heck of a time differentiating them from weeds...LOL.

newbie: Were your dwarf larkspur called "larkspur gentian blue"? That's a dwarf from valueseed that I've grown for years. Direct sown in fall, they sprout and stay green all winter.

Karen

Someone sent me seeds of Foxgloves last year but when they sprouted I realized they were annual poppies. I had heard that these were hard to transplant, but went ahead after reading many years of successful posts about wsing poppies by Bakemom.

Using the HOS method, I transplanted on a day when I knew there was goping to be a bit of rain for the next couple of days. I put a little amendment in each tiny hole. This is only a smidgeon of what I got in blooms and how spectacular they all were. Yep, I had people stopping their cars and asking what I had planted. :O)

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After years of direct sowing, I will always ws mine!

Gorgeous, Tiffy!!!

Tiffy those are beautiful. Looks like I will be w/s mine too.Is there a certain way to tell an annual from a perennial poppy, or do you just have to know each one?
Tammy

I ws poppies whenever I want them in a new bed. They self sow after that and grow even better than those that I ws.
Even one of my pots was filled with self sown poppies this
spring.

For years I tried to ds and didn't have much success.

Like alisska says, if they are too thick they won't grow well so be sure to thin them whether they are ds or ws or self sown.

I've gone mad for poppies but have found 2 kinds of seeds that will be similar to the one I want most now.

If you like tiffy's poppies, you might look at seedman.com as I saw some that looked fringed like that. Just put in a small order but got two kinds of red and a couple other things. Their website is a little tricky to navigate and order from, and since I had a keystroke logger scare (think I'm clean but not 100% sure), I didn't want to give out my cc info online any more places right now.

BTW watch for a popup that looks like Windows (and yes, I'm using Firefox) and tells you you have several trojans and viruses. DO NOT click on fix it. ONLY click on the x to close it and sometimes they can even fool you with that.

After that scare, I made sure my definitions were up-to-date and ran another scan and the auto one since. Came up clean, but you can never be sure.

So seedman has a way you can place your order then change a dropdown menu to call (they will send you their 800# by email). It wasn't very user friendly, he says they're going to another system, but if you poke around there enough you will find a whole list of plants and lots of exotic ones. I couldn't find what I wanted anywhere else, even onestoppoppies.com.

To tell the difference of an annual vs. perennial. I don't know. But Bluestone has the livermore, and they sell only perennials (got some of those seeds from seedman). I think all the Shirleys are annuals as well as the little corn poppies, purple grape poppy. But I'd have to look up the Orientals. The blue Himalayan is perennial but too tricky to try to grow right now.

I've been looking for a nice purple bachelor's button like I saw growing in my friend's garden with blue. seedman has a pretty one of those, so I plan to try it, looked all over the web for purple bb.

I let mine self-sow as well as harvest seed and broadcast them out where I want them to come up....much easier than 'direct sowing'. The larkspur I broadcast out now, but poppies I broadcast out just before the first snow around Thanksgiving. Either way many of both will come up now through hard frost and winter over as rosettes.