I've had the best success going out in wintertime and generously sprinkling those tiny seeds randomly in the flower bed. That reminds me.. I have another variety of poppy seed and need to go out in the cold and spread them around. I tried in the house in cell packs and ran into the same problem as you. They are hard to transplant, so winter-sowing directly outside has proven (at least for me) the only successful way I have grown them. The seeds are so small that they don't even need covered. The action of precipitation gets them where they need to go.

If your grandma's poppies were a named variety, you may not get exactly the same flowers as the plants she grew. Oriental poppies are hardy to about Z3 so even if yours will winter in pots and not the ground, I think they should be fine. Moving the pots to semi-protected spot (up against the house, under an evergreen etc) would give them about a 1/2 zone of protection as would sinking the pots into the ground for winter but I don't think you need to be concerned in Z6.

Thank you all for your kind responses, and for your offer of a cutting or plant, that was so nice. Chatham, is that by Albany? I'm in Orange County,not far from Stewart Airport. I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but I will try again. Speaking to my neighbor, she has the same problem, although she planted hers in moist shade.... I tried full sun, ordinary soil. I am sure once I get them to take, they will be fine. The only one that ever came back was one I planted in the fall that came from White Flower Farm, but it sent up foiliage no flowers the first season...and that was the last I saw of it.. Oldroser, would you suggest the potted types, like they sell at the nurseries in the quart size, at this time of year? I just don't know what I am doing wrong. Even when I buy them in the pot in bud, the stem shrivels and then the plant starts to yellow and go dormant ( or die ). I figured it lost it's bud to not liking to be transplanted. I was hopefull last year. I am not giving up just yet.

I bought a poppie wildflower seed mix and planted it in our roadside ditch on bare, unimproved mostly clay soil left exposed when the driveway was put in back in 1998 before we built the house. I have never tried the opium or breadseed poppies (Paper somniferum). Within a couple of months of scattering that seed mix and watering it (much less water than they said to give the mix because at that point we were only up here on weekends), I had a beautiful mix of poppies, including the corn poppies (papaver rhoeas) in red, pink and white (singles and doubles) and the Oriental Poppies (Papaver orientale). They were spectactular the first year and ever more spectacular the second year. After the second year they began to decline. Since they aren't supposed to do well in clay soil, I was probably lucky to get two good years out of them as they were in some pretty awful soil. However, they haven't gone completely away. The shirley poppies have reseeded themselves all over. The oriental poppies have not. Here's some of the places they popped up this year: In the gravel driveway down front by the road near where they were originally planted in the ditch. These are small this year due to lack of rainfall--only 4" to 6" tall and the flowers are smaller than usual too. In the ditch across the street from us. In the middle of the road in a small crack in the road. In the driveway beside my veggie garden, about 100' from where they were originally planted. In the south side of the veggie garden near the driveway in heavy soil soil that has been amended with compost and manure, but still remains very clay-ey. In the flower border on the north side of the garden which is largely unimproved clay. In the middle of the bermuda grass in my front yard. In the shrub border on the south side of my house, 300 feet from where they were originally planted. They are in the worst clay there. Didn't come up in the better improved clay. Doesn't make sense. In the extremely thick, horrible clay that surrounds my in-ground tornado shelter. I can't get anything but weeds and bermuda to grow in this soil, but it is covered in red poppies. They come back every year in this area and are very heavy this year, and quite tall, despite the lack of rainfall. In the wetter clay soil on the edge of my water garden. In the butterfly bed outside the northwest corner of my house. In a "waste area" about 150 feet behind my house where erosion has left cuts in the soil and uneven terrain that is hard to mow. This is their first year to pop up here. In the middle of my wildflower meadow area between the house and the woods. Only a few popped up here and couple of years ago, and there's only a couple of plants this year. The foliage ususally appears in April (but as early as late Feb. some years) and the flowers bloom in April/May. I deadhead them every now and then to extend the bloom period. In years with lots of rainfall they will sometimes keep blooming until mid-June. I haven't had as much luck with California poppies, which are smaller and get crowded out of my borders by more aggressive flowers that like our heat more. The first year I planted them, though, when there was nothing else around them, they were gorgeous. I had the tangerine-orange ones. I have tried Oriental poppies a couple of times since I bought that poppie seed mix, and they just didn't do well in my clay. I have grown a poppy seed mix I got from Renee's Garden Seeds that had very full poppies that looked like carnations. I planted them about 6 years ago. Their foliage is bigger and bolder than that of the other poppies I've grown. They get 2 or 3 feet tall and have only a few flowers, but the flowers they do have are gorgeous. They also did quite well for couple of years and then went away. They did bloom later than the red poppies--probably in the very late May to July timeframe. This year 2 of these plants popped up in my shrub bed and I have left them there to see if they will bloom. A friend of mine who has grown poppies for years says they do best if they are in soil that gets tilled or turned over every year. She thinks that if I were to rototill the soil in my ditch where I originally planted the poppy mix, either in the late winter or early spring, I would get a huge amount of poppies from the newly-exposed seed. I might try that next year. I just think of my poppies as "wildflowers" that will bloom for a little while and then go away. I enjoy them while they last, but know that they will only last a month or two. Dawn