Poppies are a beautiful addition to any winter garden and their seeds are great with baked products like bread and rolls.
Poppy plants grow quickly from seed up to 1m tall. As annuals, poppies are only grown from seed and self-sow readily. They do best sown directly in the desired location in either early spring or late summer/autumn to germinate the following spring.
Sprinkle the small gray, black, or brown seeds on prepared soil, but do not cover. Mixing the seeds with some sand makes it easier to spread them more evenly over the planting area as you can see where you've broadcast them. Seeds should germinate in about a week or two in early spring. They germinate better in cool soil, so seeding later in the spring often is unsuccessful.
They can also be started indoors if necessary, but need to be kept cooler than room temperature to do well. Once the seedlings are about an inch tall, thin the plants to about a foot apart.
Remove the smallest plants (pull or cut off the tops), or transplant carefully, trying to disturb the roots as little as possible as they have very sensitive root systems and do not transplant well. Plants growing closer together will be small, weak, and produce fewer and much smaller flowers.
