You are in luck: S.W.I.M. is tweaking off some killer glass and was in the mood for some research.
the following was put together for educational purposes only.
Several varieties of opium yielding poppies exist - Persian White has the largest bulb and subsequently highest yield. Another more common variety has purple petals with a white centre-don't know the variety name - its much easier variety to find than the white, but with smaller pods and a lower opium yield.
Papaver somniferum is basically a winter crop in the Southern hemisphere, preferring cool nights and warm days and will stand slight frosts. It is possible to germinate seeds in summer using plant tissue culture processes and Murashige & Skoog basic medium- stick the cultures in the fridge until they germinate. I have no successful experiences with planting these on- possibly due to the short lifecycle of the poppy, but this could be a useful starting point for experiments where the object is to cultivate poppies year round. I have tried to stratify the seed in my refrigerator with a view to inducing germination for early plantings- this has not been successful, but has not seemed to compromise the fertility of the stratified seed in any way.
All poppies like sandy soils (or at least well drained ones) with a little bit of shelter and not too much shade. Prepare beds in advance by digging fertilisers and any claybreak leaving about six weeks between each dig. Cover the beds with mulch and let them sit for a month or so. You CAN fully mulch the beds, and sow into rows where the mulch has been completely removed to about 7cm away from both sides of the seed row. DO NOT MULCH OVER SEEDS OR MULCH TO THE STEMS OF ADULT PLANTS - this makes them susceptible to fungal infestations of the browning-off type!
Plant on or around Mayday (in the Southern hemisphere) by raking into prepared beds. Broadcast seeds or sow thickly in rows. Young poppy plants resemble lettuce seedlings. Stronger plants will become apparent at about 7cm high. Wait until about 10cm high and thin as follows:
Poppies DO like a bit of companionship, so thin around a clump of 2-3 strong plants. Two thinnings about four weeks apart will ensure that plants have enough 'companionship ' (i.e. shelter, shade and whatever allopathic conditions favour clumps as opposed to individual plants). I tend to thin seedlings progressively, over a month or so, leaving only enough room for strong plants to grow into, without leaving vast spaces between plants. Poppies do not like to be moved and it is better to sow directly into beds than to transplant, which can result in stunted growth and a later, shorter flowering season.
Keep the beds well weeded (poppies hate too much competition though shorter type groundcover weeds such as chickweed can keep the soil moist). Keep the water up to them in dry areas. Opium poppies (particularly the purple ones) are weeds in many places and can stand a bit of neglect. For some strange reason the tallest and most vigorous poppies are often the ones that got walked on by accident in their youth.
You will get a lot of thinnings: young plantlets which have been removed from the garden bed to make room for stronger plants. If you're keen you CAN make use of them. I have references which list young plants 10-20cm high as having up to 71mg/100g dry weight of alkaloids. This can seem insignificant until you consider that opium is only about 12% alkaloids, and you can end up with a kilo of thinnings or more in your home garden. I estimate a couple of grams of smokeable opium type extract can be extracted using methanol. And given that thinnings usually appear prior to flowering commencing, why would you waste a chance?
On the other hand you CAN drop the thinnings into hot water and allow to steep for 10 minutes, which produces a vile tasting tea. Opium tea, in my humble opinion, is fucked. It tastes horrible, needs fresh flowers to be halfway potent, and does not store well. All alkaloids are apparently present in such a tea in roughly equal proportion to that which occurs in crude opium, but this improves the taste not one whit. Potency varies with opium tea: you can drink a glass and feel nothing, or drink a glass and discover in half an hour that you've had too much. Smoking O is a more immediate route and allows for better dose control. Smokeable O is also easier to store and has a long shelf life.
The alkaloids in Papaver somniferum are present in the plant their pure form, and are combined with so called vegetable acids. Combined with acids, alkaloids tend to be more soluble than the free bases. An early method for the extraction of morphine involved addition of calcium chloride to the filtrate of opium 'soup'. The calcium would precipitate the calcium salt of these vegetable acids as a sort of soap scum leaving a crude morphine hydrochloride.
Opium varies in alkaloidal content from batch to batch, and between regions. The British Pharmacoepia 1954 lists Yugoslavian opium as the most potent at 15-17% alkaloid content, followed by opium from Turkey, Iran, and Indian opium was at the bottom of the list with a 9-10.5% alkaloid content.
HARVEST:
As soon as flower petals open, pull them away from the capsule to expose the green seed pod, slice the surface of the pods with a SHARP blade (I find a Stanley blade best) and either place seepage directly onto fresh marijuana which is then dried, or collect the exudation into a vessel ( eggcups are good ) and store to dry. This operation is best done in the early morning- I've found that yields decrease as the temperature rises.
Another method is to slice the seed heads and wipe the opium onto cigarette papers. You can pull the dried opium latex away from the paper to store in airtight bags at a latter stage.I've found opium is best stored in a dry environment - can't remember whether its hygroscopic or not, but keep it dry for best results
In a large harvest two layers of extract will form from the opium seepage. Separate the two layers if possible - it may be possible to do this at harvest stage especially with the Persian White variety as the two layers have distinctly different weights- one can be used to enhance the potency of heads or leaf, and the other is a high grade opium product best appreciated on its own.
Discard all sliced poppy heads as trash: they are a legal liability and should they be found a charge of cultivation can more easily be proved. For economy's sake, you can also use the weep at both the edges of the cut stem- best taken by wiping straight onto fresh dope leaves. It's not high quality yield from this cut, but hey, why waste it?
You can reslice yesterdays pods if you choose to keep them, though I've found the best way to increase yields is to remove spent flowerheads at the base of the main stem or where the flower stem joins to a larger branch - this encourages new flowers to form. Leave only the capsules you intend to save for seed.
SMOKING OPIUM:
Opium is the name for the brown waxy exudation from the unripe seed capsules of Papaver somniferum. Opium is a combination of chemicals, not a chemical name in itself, as someone so rightly pointed out in Usenet recently. It's active ingredients are morphine, thebaine, codeine, papaverine and several others besides. Yield and proportions of opiates vary between individual plants, crops, varieties, areas. Other parts of the poppy plant (stems, leaves) produce a latex which dries and resembles opium, but the quality of the latexes from the other parts of the plant are not near as high
O burns at a higher temperature than pot or tobacco, so keep your lighter at its hottest. Initially pack small cones as O will keep burning long after your tobacco or pot has gone out: you can waste quite a bit without realising it. The taste is a bit of a shock at first, but the smell of the smoke is a delightful sweetish pungent scent. If you've ever read anything about smoking opium you'll recognise the smell immediately.
reference:
http://opioids.com