These plants have featured in gardening blogs and magazine articles, so what can I write in addition ?
I have found that oriental poppies are hardy plants which are easy to grow from seed, even for a novice. (This was probably written in bold letters on the seed packet). Maybe, I'll just tell my story ...
In March last year, I sowed poppy seeds outdoors and waited. Nothing happened by the end of May, so I sowed some seeds indoors in seed trays. As with the foxgloves, strong & runt oriental poppy seedlings sprouted. The four strongest seedlings on the left were planted outdoors in a flower bed a few weeks later. Then replanted further apart in autumn. The middle photo was taken in winter after the snow melted, leaving them bedraggled but still alive. Then in early spring they perked up.
By April, the four poppy plants had merged into a messy tangle of leaves.
Fearing over-crowding, I decided to remove one plant to a pot. It flopped within a couple of hours.
The next day I was looking at the messy leaves in the floor bed, thinking that removing a plant hadn't really improved the situation, when I noticed a prickly bud with a hint of red, giving a clue of what was inside.
I immediately checked amongst the limp leaves in the pot and found another bud starting to form. Guessing that the plant would struggle to revitalise the leaves and bloom simultaneously, I made a rash decision to cut off most of the leaves, just leaving a few small ones.
During May, more buds continued to form in the flower bed.
The bud in the pot died, but the leaves sprung back to life miraculously. Well, I thought it was a miracle until I read Carol Klein's article which suggests cutting the whole plant to the ground after flowering finishes, and a second flowering may follow in the same year.
Hopefully, the potted plant will flower later for them.
As Ursula Buchan points out, oriental poppies are out of proportion in the small gardens that we have in the UK. However, I rarely look at my garden from a distance these days, I used to before I became a gardener. My visitors do, and probably see a confused collection of allsorts, they remark politely on how they can tell that I love plants.
I staked the poppy plants in the flower bed, because the flowers were falling over. When tying to the stake, I bunched the leaves as well as the poppy stalks together loosely, which gives a neater appearance. I should have done this earlier, but then I wouldn't have removed the potted one and seen for myself how resilient these plants can be.
The petals start shedding within a week after the bud bursts open. I'm guessing that the flowers are short-lived because they attract so much attention from bees that fertilisation is completed quite quickly. That is the purpose of flowers after all.
Apparently, seed heads must be removed if you want the plant to produce more buds. Needless to say, I'm removing heads from two plants but leaving one untouched to see what happens.
The remaining plants grown from the runt seedlings are just coming into bud now, the buds look large compared to the size of the miniature plants and the leaves are neater. As with the foxgloves, I haven't figured out yet if these are smaller because they are a different hybrid or because they were deprived as babies. Either way, enormous poppies or runts, both are welcome in my garden.
Carol Klein explains how to propogate oriental poppies by taking root cuttings :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jun/05/oriental-poppies-gardening
Ursula Buchan writes about the various cultivars of oriental poppies :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/3290322/In-focus-oriental-poppy.html
An unusual view of an oriental poppy .... please visit Rosie@Leaves&Bloom :
http://leavesnbloom.blogspot.com/2011/05/lighting-closer-look-picture-this.htmlSad poppies in the Orkney Islands ... please visit Fay@Wind&Wellies :
http://orkneyflowers.blogspot.com/2011/05/heartbreaking.html
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