January 2025- Poppy Patch Planting Adventure - 5 poppy seed planting tips - and Notes from the farm

Just a few poppy seeds for planting at Posegate Farms this January. We love to try new varieties!

Happy New Year Flower Friends!

 

Since it is currently 16 degrees Fahrenheit outside, it’s the perfect day to plan and dream about what new things Spring will bring!  I know warmer weather is on its way to Tulsa. So, in the meantime, here’s a glimpse into what we do on the flower farm in winter. Folks always tell me – must be nice to take the winters off. On the contrary! We do the biggest projects and get so much done in the winter months. No grass to mow, no weeds to pull, not nearly as many hours spent watering, or sweating, or swearing…we finally have time and energy to get something done! 

This winter we will be installing some new fencing.  We’ve already put down so much fresh mulch and we are hoping to put down one or two more trailer loads before spring. We’ve planted 30 new peony plants (100 more to go-We plant more every time its warm outside.)  We’ve planted out 100’s of new perennials, and dug and divided many more – keeping some and potting up others for spring sales.

Our most interesting winter job – sowing poppy seeds!  We have been trying since 2017 to establish a poppy patch in our front yard.  We love their amazing and bizarre April/May blooms. The bees absolutely revel in their pollen pools and it’s so fun to watch them buzz around. Their beautiful seed pods are fun to use as fresh cuts or as dried stems. These poppy pods are a super useful ingredient for floral design! 

OK. I’m admitting that we have not had great luck with poppies. As of January 2025, we have had seven spring harvest opportunities since our first patch was planted (aka attempted) in fall 2017. Our first three springs NOT A SINGLE POPPY SPROUTED. And yet every year we bought piles of gorgeous poppy seed packets. Picking up new colors and species when we could find them.  Every fall and winter we tossed them into the garden with a hope and a prayer. Every spring we looked and looked, hoping to see a scraggly little poppy seedling here or there.

April and May 2021 - Spring #4!  “WHAT TOOK SO LONG? YA’LL ARE LATE TO THE PARTY!” is what I actually said, out loud, when I was admiring my first poppy crop. We finally grew a few poppies!  So. Why did it take so long? What was the magic that made those poppies grow?

One winter probably 2019 or 2020 ish, my sister read an article by Martha Stewart about sowing poppy seeds in the snow.  It was likely a calendar entry of hers. If anyone out there ever read her magazine, my sister was always fascinated by the seemingly random yet very useful things that Martha scheduled into her monthly calendar printed in Martha Stewart Living.  At first, we thought this was absurd and wrote it off as an “east coast” thing that would never work here on the plains.  In Northeast Oklahoma we hardly have any reliable snowfall. And we certainly don’t have 6-10 inches of snow on which to sow our poppy seeds. Despite our misgivings, we kept the article anyways.  That winter my sister watched a few more you tube videos about poppy seeding. We even watched as Martha sprinkled poppy seeds magically onto the snow in her gorgeous garden on her Instagram page.

After further research, my sister discovered that poppies do indeed prefer melting snow as the perfect seedbed for these reasons. As outrageous as this sounds, here’s why it works:

1.       Cool temps – poppies prefer the cooler weather of fall and winter for germination and growth.

2.       Steady moisture levels – poppies need moist soil - not too wet, not too dry soil conditions.  The water content is super essential for good poppy germination.

3.       Light requirements – poppies prefer to rest on the soil’s surface. In full sun. I’m talking just lying right on top of the bare soil. Don’t cover with anything! No mulch! (a dreaded concept in my garden – no mulch means tons of weeds come Spring)  

4.       Soil texture – as like most plants – poppies prefer good soil drainage and light fluffy soil. Not too compacted, great drainage, full sun, bare soil with a perfect soil moisture level. Are you beginning to see why it takes so long to get these things going in OK???

5.       Freeze and thaw cycles – if you live in a climate where snow falls regularly – and then melts and refreezes regularly – the poppy seeds love that steady moisture and their seed coats are slowly cracked open by the changing freezing and thawing temperatures. Here in Oklahoma, we definitely have a freeze/thaw kind of winter, but that alone won’t convince the poppies to germinate. That critical ingredient – water or soil moisture– is the key to successful germination.

6.       Perfect timing – any of my seed starting students will know – we always do our research first!  Every single plant species has its own preferences. Poppies are no different.

a.        I have tried sowing in November – too early. Nothing came up. I think the relentless OK fall rains washed the seeds away and none were left for spring.

b.       We tried sowing in December – better! We definitely had a few sprout from our patch sown in December.

c.       We tried January – Better germination! Would recommend. (Go outside NOW and sprinkle those seeds!)

d.       We tried February – Early Feb. is OK! Right after Valentine’s Day is pretty much the last time we will sow poppy seeds.

e.       We tried March – They will sprout! You will have a glorious set of blooms in late May and maybe into June. However – many of these sprouted too late to be able to set seed pods. And since this is our favorite part, we plant ours earlier in the year!

f. April and beyond – if you read the seed packets, this is when they tell you to plant poppies. LOL! Maybe someplace else- but not in Oklahoma! Good thing those plants can’t read the labels. Because they know better and they sprout when they feel like it!

7.       Seed bank saved in soil – of all of the above, this one is the most important if you want to establish a poppy patch that comes back year after year.

a.       we add new seeds every winter!

b.       When we harvest in the spring, we make sure to let the pods mature before we cut them.  Why do we do that? Some florists prefer to use the pods when they are still green. Yes, that is pretty, but we like the pods best when harvested fully mature.  Whenever possible, we let the pods mature on the plant and only cut the pods as soon as the seeds begin to drop. This ensures the seeds inside the pods are fully formed and ready to plant next year. 

c.       During harvest in May and June, we sprinkle the contents of those pods generously in the garden. We are making sure our “soil seed bank” account is full!  Because it is really difficult for us to mimic the perfect environment for seed germination, we let mother nature handle it for us.  One way to ensure that you will have poppies forever is to keep planting more seeds. You can sprinkle the seeds you grow, or buy new ones. But make sure to leave plenty of seeds in the garden every year for your patch to grow every spring.

d.       We see it this way – we plant about 1,000 poppy seeds and expect 100 to actually germinate. Of those 100 that sprouted, about 1 or 2 will live long enough to grow up, bloom, and set seed. Yes, it’s bleak from a number’s perspective. Every year we plant more and more seeds, trying to boost our seed bank account so we can have an amazing return on our investment every spring!

Here's hoping this almost nine-year poppy patch adventure will help you find success. And hopefully you will be able to get poppy blooms the very first season you sow them.  Remember, for best results, start with A LOT of seeds! Buy several packets. One is just not enough. Or go totally wild and order 10,000 seeds like we did last year. We had an amazing harvest!!!  And the best part of a great harvest – we get to keep all those seeds for next year’s crop.

As always, thanks for your support of Posegate Farms. We appreciate our flower friends so much. And we’ll see you in the garden!