Breadseed Poppy

[oxbowfarm]

Does anyone have any breadseed poppy seed (Papaver somniferum) they can give me? I had some but planted it in late spring like a fool and THEN read up on them and discovered that you plant in early fall.
Doh! I'm happy to trade, lots of flint corn grex, many squash, wheat, dry and snap beans, kales, turnips, lettuce, chickpea, favas.

One of our favorite vendors at our market is a Hungarian family that does baked goods. They have several poppyseed pastries that I love, so I want to try to grow my own.

[12540dumont]

I'll check.

[steev]

What? The local grocery is one spice short of a full rack? In the unlikely event you get seeds that produce huge pods, do PM me, please.

[diane]

Some unknown person seems to have tossed a few opium poppy seeds in a lot of plots at the allotment garden where I have my vegetables. (Sunshine! No deer!) Just the regular wild ones, not the frilly flowers that are grown in flower borders. Then they come by at night and harvest the green pods. Silly.

However, one plotholder has poppies with huge pods. They look like they should be sprayed gold and put on the Thanksgiving table.

I'll see if I can get a few seeds. ---

Oct 5 - no seeds. no pods. the poppyhead harvester struck again.

[mayz]

the seeds used in bakery are perfectly viable. Oxbow, ask to your baker if he can give you a few. I'm sure he will be happy to participate to a narcotic culture

[flowerpower]

I just put a stamp on the envelope. I'll mail them tomorrow. I do not plant them in the fall. But I plant VERY early in the spring. As soon as I can see bare ground, I toss seeds. and I don't cover them with soil. They do very well, even in containers.

It is legal to grow P soniferum and save seed in NY. The seed itself is food. It becomes illegal when you ''process'' the unripened seed pods. If you attempt to get the narcotics from it, it's very obvious you have played with the pods.

[greltam]

I had bought bag of poppyseed last year and scattered it all over last year/winter. I had read that they should be "planted" in january and that they needed cold stratification. What I got was 3 plants in total that came up, and was lucky to get a few seed pods. I don't know if the seed is irradiated, but YMMV depending on when you plant and if you buy food grade seeds.

[atash]

I have twice planted poppies in late spring, not because I thought it was a good idea, but because that's when I got around to it (blush). They germinated fine without cold and bore crops. For me, best to plant late winter after cleaning out their beds. Weeds grow through the winter here.

I need new stock of poppy seeds. My old stock was too old. I grew the only thing I could find late in the season last year, but I don't think "white" poppy seeds are aesthetically acceptable. Seems to me you want dark seeds for breadcrusts, pastries, and salad dressing.

[mskrieger]

Reviving old thread...anybody know if breadseed poppies tend to flower later than poppies bred/intended for decorative purposes? I noticed bright red ornamental poppies blooming three weeks ago, while my breadseed poppies have just begun producing flower buds.

Nitty gritty details: they're decendants of Elka and Ziar poppy seed, from the three survivors that flowered in my last year's garden. This year's germination rate was spectacular (I sowed in late March, in and amongst my garlic, and did not cover the seed) and the plants have grown quite large. I'll let you guys know if I get large pods with lots of seed.

[templeton]

What's a large pod for poppy? I've seen frilly pinks grow to about 25 mm= 1 inch across.
T

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Perennial poppies have a huge root system to store energy, so they can get a faster start in the spring. Therefore in my area, the perennial poppies flower about a month or two earlier than the annual poppies.

The biggest poppy pods I've seen personally are about 25 mm in diameter..

[steev]

They get twice that size in Afghanistan; not that I'm interested in pod-size, much; mucking about with poppy-sap being illegal and all; not that I'd ever have anything whatsoever to do with illegality; heaven forfend! Any "intoxicant" not on the government's "approved" list is certainly not something I'd want to mess with.

[templeton]

just googled it - the Tasmanian ones are about 1 inch from web pictures, but this guy - sounds like England - has huge fist sized pods - must hold a lot of seeds - but it doesn't look like he's into baking .
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLp07XnKFDI
T

[Walk]

Our breadseed poppy pods can get quite large here in Minnesota - 1.5" or larger when seeded in mid April (frost and snow tolerant). Crowded plants put out smaller pods but more of them. It seems to be a wash yield-wise as to whether to thin the patch or not. We've grown the white-seeded Elka from Fedco and also a blue-seeded Hutterite variety from Plum Creek Seeds. The birds really seem to like the Elka (milder flavor - we liked it better too) so we have given up on it and just grow the Hutterite one. We've been growing our poppies for cooking since the mid 1980's. They are quite pretty when a patch is in flower and the bees of all kinds are busy rolling around in the blossoms collecting pollen. The patch will literally hum with their enthusiasm.

[mskrieger]

Ah, gotcha. I didn't know poppies could be perennial in cold climates...but now that you mention it and I looked it up, I remember my father grew a few poppies in the same spot every year, bright red/orange, could've been P. orientale (perennial). He always complained they didn't do well as it was too wet.

The breadseed poppies I grow seem to be fine and happy annuals, and that makes sense they would bloom later.

And I'll see how big the pods get this year. I did not thin, being leery of stepping in the garlic patch. There was great diversity in how big the poppy plants got. I don't know if it's differences in soil or genetics. Some seem super runty, some are huge.