This is a good time, great time.. I just bought some today of some that I do not have.It is on my schedule of duties tomorrow.

Wantonamara how are you going to sow them? Will they grow a little then die back and finally bloom in the Spring? Or, will they grow all winter thru the Spring?

I add them to a jar of sand and mix them up because they are so small and then I scatter them, rake them in with my fingers and step on them to firm them into the ground and water . I keep them moist for a tad and you will see them, germinate. I do like to give them a bit of moisture if it does not rain. They will put on size. They do not die back but grow slowly and then quickly. They do not like transplanting. The trick is to get them scattered thinly enough. That is why I use the sand. You get to weed less.

Awesome! I planted some poppy anemone and they have sprouted and are growing pretty fast, with no sign of frost stress, so was wondering. How cool! I am loving all the new gardening stuff I'm learning! I am going to do my sowing this afternoon and keep you posted on progress!

I saw some poppy seedlings that volunteer every year out there today. I need to threw some water on an area that had poppies on them in years past. That is how I get my poppies now. I just make sure that I water the areas lightly so they will germinate.I planted some different colors of the Californian poppies. I have some Shirley poppies to plant. i saw my larkspur germinating. It is a good time to plant them also if you have those seeds. They too will come up year after year. I planted Love-in-a-Mist also now.

Each year I harvest lots of poppy seeds and broadcast them. But they seem to grow the best where I harvested those seeds. Right now those are about 3 inches tall but no sight of those I broadcasted. :(

I have blast off of the Callifornia poppies all the ones where I planted in years past WAY TO THICK I see weeding in my future.. I think I saw some coming up where I just brought in a new bed.

I have poppy seedlings everywhere - I threw them last week and the week before that; I think all this cold rainy weather helped all of them come up bc they are literally everywhere! Makes me very excited!

In addition to that everything I planted except for my Lilies have been very active.

Yea!!!!

Poppies are good cheap fun . I save some seed for insurance and let some go to seed.

The pictures are from the last wet winter. I do not water so they do not perform for me every year.I am looking forward to things this spring. The red/orange ones on the bottom picture, I picked the seeds from a mountain in the foothills of the Maritime Alps of Provence. They always take me beck to a GREAT DAY
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GORGEOUS PHOTOS! Thank you Mara.

I'm looking forward to seeing pictures of Rene's poppies (and everyone else's too including Mara) this coming spring after all the rains we've had. I hope it keeps on raining.

Many of the old seeds that I planted were no good but I have lots coming up and the seeds that I bought are all coming up. Some Way to thickly. I have been spreading the seedlings around and that usually doesn't work to good but I do it anyway. LOL.

Gasp. Breathtaking. Whence come your original seeds, apart from Provence?

This post was edited by kitchendetective on Sat, Dec 27, 14 at 14:41

I got some from Yuccadoo nursery when I went and visited them. They were giving them away to customers. They were really nice deep deep red with black centers and a roughly tuft of central petals around the black.Same with the Natural gardener. I got some fro trades. Most of the ones that come back every year are the singles.. The peony poppies seem to not come back after the two years of drought. OH , I bought some of the blue Hungarian bread poppies. They all seem to intergrade a bit. I planted store bought Shirley's and double Shirley's and large pack of multiple colors of Californian poppies this year. It is easy to get poppy seeds from seed traders BUT the trick is to get fresh poppy seed and USE them soon. Poppy seed do get old fairly quickly. I have a tendency to forget and store them till they are bad. All that you see in the pictures above are volunteer poppies. The pictures below are some close ups of poppies through the years. Most volunteer, some from trades.
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*faints*

One thing that is good to take into consideration when one pics spots to plant is That poppies are fragile and March is a windy month so pick a place that might be out of the wind. I found this out the way we normally find things out...by doing the wrong thing and having nothing but bedraggled half flowers. This was not a concern in Austin because buildings, fences and trees mostly break the wind but out in the country wind is much more of a factor in the wild open spaces.

Is it too late for me to sow CA native poppies in Sunset zone 17 and hope for plants in 2015? sadly beds were not ready before this.

Appreciate the recommendation of sowing with sand

Just posted the preceding message and apologize for listing in wrong state forum. Hope Texas poppies are flourishing as well.