Re: BEST TIME FOR BROADCASTING PAPAVER SEED

Here in the SF Bay Area, I would suggest that sowing
California poppy seeds as early as August is good if
you would like very early blooming.  I put in a new
street planting strip for my neighbors this July, and
gave the new plantings overhead spray irrigation and
heavily mulched trying to control the crop of weeds
and Oxalis pes-caprae that I also knew I was unable to
get rid of completely.  The Calif. poppies started
germinating within weeks,(the plant had already been
in this area previously, so seed was already there). 
I'd guess the seeds germinated back the first of
August, and were already blooming by early September,
and continue to do so now.  I have been continuously
dead heading the seed pods to try and keep the blooms
coming into winter, and it seems to be working.

So to recap, Catherine's advice about November sowing
is probably as good as any, but if you are willing to
irrigate in late summer, or we get early rains, at
least California poppies are programmed to reseed
about any time of year they get sufficient moisture to
cue them to start growing.  Raking the seed into the
ground by stirring the dirt up certainly doesn't help,
but I found they were plenty willing to tolerate no
direct attention to seeding/covering them, and even
came up through the weed cloth I put down and bark
mulched over.  In fact, I suspect that weed fabric and
mulch along with intermittent drip/spray irrigation
helped keep the soil that much moister, and encouraged
the seedlings along.


--- Catherine Ratner <tactar@verizon.net> wrote:

> Broadcast the seed in November, or even earlier.  In
> nature the  
> plants bloom in spring, the pods form and mature,
> and pop out their  
> seeds immediately.
> 
> Cathy
> On Dec 9, 2007, at 3:14 PM, Sylvia Sykora wrote:
> 
> > For years I've delayed broadcasting California and
> other poppy  
> > seeds until January, waiting until our Northern
> California rains  
> > had well and truly arrived and the usual upheaval
> of the garden ?  
> > moving, planting bulbs, etc. - was at an end.  In
> all those years I  
> > must have broadcast thousands and thousands of
> seeds and never  
> > gotten a single, solitary germinated seedling. 
> For a long time I  
> > blamed our winter sparrows which strip fresh green
> growth from  
> > anything within reach.  I now wonder if I?m sowing
> the seed at the  
> > wrong time as Nigella seed, spilled from ripe seed
> capsules much  
> > earlier in the year germinate readily.    Can
> anyone suggest a  
> > better plan or a more successful way to achieve
> results?   It seems  
> > a shame not to be able to grow our state flower!
> >
> > Thank you for any suggestions you may have.
> >
> > Sylvia Sykora
> > Oakland, California
> > USDA Zone 9
> > Sunset Zone 15/16
> >
> 
>
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