Poppy Growing Guide

After three years of trying to grow poppies, I finally got my first bloom last week! 💃🍾🎉 I was sowing at the wrong time….and then I found your poppy growing videos last year. Thanks for such useful and practical info, Brie. I don’t holiday shop on Black Friday so planting poppies will be my new holiday tradition 😊

I live in northwest Washington by the Canadian border. I bought a pound of seeds and put them in a bucket of water, then poured the bucket out into my garden beds in the middle of winter. Yielded stalks almost 5ft tall with magnificent flowers

I took your advice last year and fall seeded a mix of larkspur, poppies, bachelor buttons, along with dill, cilantro, radish, and parsley. No luck with poppies but everything else is blooming this spring! Thanks for the tip!

I can vouch for the poppies not liking hot weather! They are also very prone to summer fungi and mites. They don't like excess water, but wilt in the heat if they don't get it. Next year, as I am in WI, I will start them indoors, and plant earlier in the year to avoid the extreme heat. They are so beautiful, and worth perfecting their successful growth!

Fascinating! This is the first year I’ve grown California poppies, and I’m hooked! I hope to be able to attend one of your presentations so that I can purchase some of your seeds. The cottage garden borders look nothing short of amazing! Blessings... daisy

Dummy me, i grew poppies from seed this season and had beautiful lilac PomPoms from rare seeds/baker creek (had great germination) but i cut off the seed making pods thinking they may rebloom lol! Oh well, now I know for next season to keep my seeds.

I share your full heart whenever someone admires and wants to stroll through your garden. I agree...no better compliment! I've put a reminder on my Nov 25 calendar for some direct sowing of poppies :) Thanks for sharing all your experience with us!

Such a great, helpful video. I am growing poppy’s in zone 3b for the first time. I did a spring direct sow and some are just germinating. I will most definitely follow to see how to harvest my own seeds. Thank you and happy gardening.

My poppies are still really small but finally starting to get bigger... i hope they make it! Hot days coming soon, I'm worried they'll dry out in their pots if they don't get big enough soon. I'm growing some sort of Hungarian, Danish Flag, and some from the Asian food store from Turkey. The asian food store seeds are growing like mad under my light indoors, rapidly outpacing the couple of hungarian ones I have under the light. I've been noticing that my little tiny poppies are happier with less than blazing full light hitting them all day. Better germ rates in the shady spots too I think

Such a beautiful spring garden! How do you think the garden would look if it was left to self seed without additional sowing? I’ve learned so much from your videos!

Voila. Great success. Black Friday direct sowing over daffodil bed. Daffodils wonderful early spring display. Your turn. Nigella love in a mist front row, white poppies in middle of bed, next blue bachelor buttons, next larkspur, barley as backdrop. Wonderful. Still awaiting blooming of larkspur but all else a magic show. Walkers regular tour stop!

This is my second year growing poppies in zone 8b (western oregon) and I have so appreciated your videos. The first year your videos were so helpful as I had never grown many flowers from seeds before, thank you! I had a question for this year that I noticed. I pretty much did the same thing as last year, trying your bowling method:) when scattering seeds, but there is a small patch I noticed that the poppy plants are stunted and quite small this year. They are all in the same area, had the same amount of compost I put in before scattering the seeds. I thought maybe it was because I didn't weed that area too well after the seeds were coming up (when it was cold and frosty here, we had a long winter), and the extra weeds stunted their growth? Just seeing if you had any other ideas, because to the left of the small patch, things are growing quite tall and starting to bloom (and there were weeds there too). Last year I tried the whole thinning too, and this year I didn't do that, but most of the area has no issue with the fact that I didn't thin the seedlings. Thank you for any trouble shooting assistance for next year! I always tell my husband I follow your videos (he is from North Carolina-tar heel grad:) and he gets a kick out of me getting my assistance from a North Carolinian expert horticulturist!

I'm no expert but I believe the increase in the amount of light after the Winter solstice also triggers the growth of the plant.

Thank you so much for showing this. I no longer need a doctor :)

Do you sell your papaver somniferum seeds???

Oh, my gosh, I had no idea poppies get that big/tall! Gorgeous!

Oh my goodness what a beautiful garden. I would love to have a flower garden. Like that . I am in zone 6/ 7 some say one one say another. Northwest.

I'm trying to find the Oriental poppy 'Sultana' here in the States, or to buy some seed. I saw it growing at Sissinghurst many years ago and it was a lovely raspberry/watermelon color. If anyone has a source, please reply here....

Hi Brie. Your cottage-style gardens are looking fabulous- I'll be having something like that myself. Are those yellow-colored flowers, in your backyard, mustard plants, and if so, which variety? I think they look good with your poppies, etc. display.

Hi Brie I’m a first time poppy “sower” my plants are huge and plenty of buds … but why are my leaves and overall plants so much larger is it a different variety than yours? How many buds per plant is average… maybe show a quick anatomy of the poppy plant, it is very different than I expected. Everything else is shaded out or pushed over from these “cabbage” style leaves… so far very fun to grow and cannot wait for my first bloom….. all because of your channel… thanks from your neighbor in Angier