Gorgeous! I love the look of poppies but have never grown them.

Aw I love poppies! Yours look fabulous! I really should try to grow them again sometime. When I was a younger person, even younger than I am now, I painted my bedroom fire-engine red with black trim, sort of like a poppy!

In reality, RAW is good if you want to do post-processing edits and you often need special programs like Photoshop or Lightroom to edit the images. A RAW file isn't actually an "image" like JPG is, it's really just "data" that allows greater freedom for processing images and has it's own drawbacks (large file size, lack of contrast and sharpness, needs to be converted to a file like JPG or PNG to be "useable). JPG is usually just as effective and lots of "pros" shoot in JPG. I use RAW because I post-process all my images in Lightroom, but they all get saved as a JPG on my computer, but if you don't want/need/plan to do that it doesn't necessarily mean your photographs will be worse. All photos will often show up "not as good" on sites like Gardenweb or Facebook, etc. because they get compressed to upload them though. Your poppy photo is absolutely gorgeous, and anything that has black/dark colors is very difficult to photograph unless the lighting is just about perfect (which, when taking pictures outdoors, it almost never is), no matter what file type you use! Nice job!

Looks awesome!

Thanks Zach. Yea, I kept trying multiple times in different lighting and positions - lol. I've never tried shooting raw, but read that is sometimes the best choice when shooting something with extreme contrast. I use Paintshop Pro and GIMP, so not sure if either of those programs would handle the raw data well or not. But anyway, the last settings I chose did come out with a pretty presentable shot.

One of my shots didn't have the colors quite right, so I played around with an artistic effect in Paintshop called Colored Edges. It came out kind of cool, I think, almost like a painting or drawing.

I found these Red Oriental Poppies very easy to grow and maintain. I even dug some out last fall and repositioned them in that same garden bed, even though they say they don't like to be disturbed because of the long taproot. They did look VERY unhappy afterward, but they have come back like gangbusters this year! Next time we have a swap, I'll try to dig some up and divide the taproot for starts to bring.

I love California Poppies as well, for their bright golden color. But those I can't seem to grow well - I might get a few to take and bloom, and go to seed, but they never come back the next year.

You should be able to adjust the contrast manually in post-processing. One thing I have found that works especially well for photographing flowers is to shoot on overcast days! Unlike birds, which is what I shoot most and which benefit from being almost entirely front-lit on a sunny day, the soft/diffused lighting of a cloudy day bring out the colors an textures of flowers/vegetation much more than when the sun is hitting them. so when the clouds roll in, I switch from shooting birds to plants! Backlighting can also produce some cool results. I love the "painting" quality of that picture Misty!

The only poppies I currently have are the white prickly poppies that grow wild here. In fact they just opened their first flowers out in the weed patch I call a "yard" today! I have seeds for them somewhere, but it hardly seems necessary since the pop up all on their own.

Absolutely beautiful!

Ooooh, so gorgeous! I keep telling myself I'm gonna grow some poppies but I can never figure out where they should go. (And of course this year all of my available free space is getting filled with veggie plants).

Does anyone know if poppies can be interplanted in daffodil/tulip beds?

I took another shot this morning, lol - saw some softer lighting with some backlighting like you were mentioning, Zach. I really like the way this came out - you can see a bit of my Center Glow Ninebark, too. It's doing very well this year, with lots of clusters of white flowers (you can only see the buds here, though).

I also dried one Poppy bloom in the silica gel. It didn't hold the color too well, and a lot of the black center turned to powder. But it's interesting for sure. Has even more of that crepe paper look!

Laura - I think Poppies would do well in your Daffodil/Tulip beds as long as you have room for them. They do kind of take over! I think the daffs/tulips would be pretty well done before the poppies really start getting big (at least this Oriental Poppy does get very tall and wide), so would make a good late spring/early summer show. The Poppies do look rather ugly during the summer, so last year I planted a dwarf Rose of Sharon near my them so once they are done blooming, I'll cut the foliage back and the Rose of Sharon will fill up that spot. The poppies do start growing a bit again as temps cool down, but it's nice to have another plant to fill in until then.

I love that photo Misty! The poppies match so well with that nine bark and you captured it beautifully! the dried flower is interesting. Have you ever tried pressing one? I borrowed the plant press from work last summer and it makes for some really cool artwork.

It’s just a phone shot but here’s my poppies growing in my sea of cheatgrass. I’m surprised at how well they are doing with all the weed competition, but at least I get to look at something besides invasives, though they aren’t much fun if you get too close (apparently some people call them “thistle poppies, though I’ve never actually heard anyone call them that). Last year I accidentally weed whacked most of them, haha.

Argemone polyanthemos

Thanks Zach. I have not tried pressing flowers - except for a long time ago sticking some in between pages in a book! lol Might look into a more professional method - seems like I've seen some in craft stores.

I like your white poppies! Very O'Keefe like!! Yea, that foliage looks dangerous!

I started collecting plants for work out at Rocky Flats to document the species in the Xeric Tallgrass Prairie that is found nowhere else but the northern Front Range and has all but disappeared. But we had 3 plant presses in the herbarium so I took one home. Problem with Tallgrass species is that they are TALL, trying to find a frame that will fit a big bluestem or Indiangrass specimen isn't easy (or cheap) haha.

Prickly poppy is common in disturbed ares from the foothills east. It's definitely one of our showier species! It is an annual, sometimes biennial, but if you, or anyone else, want some seeds let me know and I'll collect some for you. I think they might require stratification though.

DeZi, your poppies look great too, are those also Oriental poppies or one of the annual species?

Speaking of poppies, I have an aunt who is seeking purple poppies. If anyone has one to divide or sees them for sale, could you let me know? Thanks!

Ooo, never heard of purple poppies! Searched it and those are really pretty! Hope you find some.

I don’t currently have seeds but I have tried to grow “Lauren’s grape” and “Hungarian blue” poppies before which are both purple. They are annual opium/bread seed poppies though (P. somniferum) not perennial Oriental ones.

@Zach those are oriental poppies they have been on the hill for 5 years now. No special treatment at all and they keep coming back. I think there are a couple baby plants this year I can dig one up for you. I can try and collect seeds too.

Thanks, Zach! You are always a wealth of information. But she wants those big Oriental ones.

DeZi, that would be amazing. I will send you a message!

I'm a treasure trove of useless information, haha!

Skybird is having some technical difficulties right now, but here is her reply to this thread that I will just copy and paste here (hopefully this website figures it's "stuff" out soon cuz its acting really dumb here lately. I think there's more problems with it now than when we originally moved from the old version to Houzz! At least back then they had someone on staff that was attentive to the issues, now it's just a "sucks to suck" attitude from them it seems like.

Anyway, from Skybird:

It looks like I can't post a reply to ANY thread on RMG right now {or forever?????] so here's my reply to the most recent posts on the Poppies Thread! Hope it works this way!

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RMG is so screwed up for me right now that I don’t have a clue if this is gonna post or not, but I’ll try! [It did not work--so trying it this way!]

Oriental poppies are one thing you can propagate from the roots! To do it, dig up a piece of root, as big/thick as possible. Be sure to keep track of which end is “the top!” Then fill a small pot with sterile/new soil, use a piece of bamboo stake or something to make a small round hole in the middle of the pot, and insert a (about) 2” piece of root into the hole—being sure the TOP IS ON THE TOP. Put it in the hole so it comes out just about even with, or slightly above, the surface of the soil. Water with the sprayer in the kitchen sink to be sure the soil is completely settled in around the piece of root, saturating the soil completely. Then let the soil dry almost completely, and resaturate. Keep repeating the watering cycle, and, I don’t remember how long it takes, but eventually you’ll have a new plant start to grow from the piece of root in the soil. Most important is to be SURE you keep the “top” of the root UP—or it won’t work!

This is one type of vegetative propagation, effectively cloning the plant, so you know for sure what color the flowers will be on the “new” plant—but it’ll take a while!

Seeds are very easy to collect from the ripe seedheads of Oriental poppies, but, if I remember right, germinating them can be difficult! Winter sowing, EARLY in winter, would probably be the best way to do it! If there are other Oriental poppies anywhere nearby you could possibly wind up with a different color!

I love the color of the ones growing on The Hill, DeZi It’s more “unusual” than the “traditional” red ones—which I like too! I love ALL poppies! Iceland poppies included, tho they’re much more short-lived than Oriental poppies. I’ve never had much luck with the opium poppies, tho I think I gave them too much water and not enough sun! Never got Lauren’s Grape to grow at all!

Skybird

P.S. DeZi and GardenChloe, my spring trip is now officially cancelled, and I’ll PM each of you soon about the iris! I haven’t forgotten you! I should be in Cortez right now—and I wish I could be!