I've read on many different websites that Opium poppies DO NOT transplant well and that I will never get anywhere transplanting them. Let me just say that this is wrong. The day after I transplanted my first-ever small crop of poppies I was heart broken to read that they would not survive being transplanted. I had waited what seemed like an eternity for them to get big enough to transplant and after all that I had just read that they wouldn't survive. I went straight out that day and bought some peat pots to start a whole new batch from the seeds I had left over determined to make this work. 3 weeks later my plants have more then trippled in size and are doing great. Please note that after transplanting them I did add some Miracle Gro to the equation. I don't know what these people who say they can't be transplanted are doing to their plants but don't believe everything you read online.(Except of course this post)
I think poppies generally do better when grown where they are sown but I have transplanted P. somniferum (many varieties) and had midsummer to fall blooms here in the sub-arctic. Shaun
My reading of the Controlled Substance Act indicates that growing opium poppies is not controlled. It takes many hundreds to obtain opium paste in any reasonable quantity, and I suspect if one was found to be lancing the seed heads a visit from the police and prosecution might result. I do know in my area one lady had an excessively large field of the poppies and she was told to destroy them. This was told to me from a relatively reliable third party source. I often check municipal gardens when travelling and often see Papaver somniferum plants growing. Poppy seeds from the bulk food stores are Papaver somniferum and will grow if planted. The variety is rather limited though. I have transplanted the papaver somniferum by simply not disturbing the roots when placing in the ground. It is diffciult to grow individual plants due to the small size of the poppy seeds, so I plant many in one spot and cut off the unwanted plants. But the seeds do sprout and grow easily by direct seeding under the right conditions. Papaver somniferum grows well if six to eight inches is allowed around each plant. I grow a few, simply because the flowers are most attractive, and the bees go into absolute frenzies around the blooms. Unfortunately, the blooms only last for one day or at most two.
Them having living through transplanting does not show that they were not affected by it. For instance, you might get smaller tops now than you would have if they had not been disturbed. Opium poppies have been illegal in the US since 1969 yet they are all over the place in gardens here, perhaps our most common reseeding annual. As of a few years ago garden centers here were still offering transplants and probably the seed packets as well.
I know I'd sure like to get my hands on some - even if just to be a little rebelious! I love poppies, and have seeds for red as well as pink varieties. Don't think they're the opium kind though, unfortunately. Yeah, I heard there are little old lady's who've actually been arrested for innocently growing these in their yards! How absurd, given the circumstances. Thanks for the great information guys. : )
Urban myths aside, I do not think that any little old ladies will have been arrested in this country for growing opium poppies. Not in the last 40 years anyway. You can smoke a joint in front of any policeman and they will not say a word - they have real crimes to occupy them - and growing planrs for what is almost certainly aesthetics is way down the list.
This is the only one I remember. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/n...=ded7c710-9473-4376-a6d5-556f8974db48&k=39073 Shaun
Thanks for the link! That is so ridiculous to treat that person like a criminal, when it was just a part of their culture! Wow. : O
If "My culture [meaning, the culture in the place where I was before I came to Canada] permits it" would justify consuming opium, then it would also justify things so terrible that this post would be deleted if I even named them.
