michael
Bluelight Crew
so you want to try and grow some poppies?
yes yes, i know about poppies.org . however, they are not accepting registrations (not to mention they have even dumber slang then SWIM), so where does the n00b go to ask some questions? ah, yes, you will say that exalted site will answer all of your questions. well, in my experience, it won't. add to this the fact that the grow faqs there only cover the most basic of grow principles, and you will see the conundrum that the first time grower is in.
so i embarked on a small (2 x 6 by 6 foot plots) grow project, with the hopes of at least getting a small bit of latex for a personal smoking stash. now when to plant depends on where in the world you live. as i live in a northerly climate, i elected to plant in the early spring. a late frost pushed the date back a week or so. had i gotten around to planting the seedlings may have survived. i understand that people in more favorable areas can plant in the fall and winter their plants successfully. where i live got 3 feet of snow in a month last winter, so i don't think that's an option for me.
i should mention at this point that you should only try to grow p. somniferum if you are looking to cop a buzz. california, etc. poppies are worthless. there are several varieties of somniferum, but i am going to try and keep this short in scope.
about a week after i sowed my seeds broadcast stylee, i got my first few sprouts. well, not a few. hundreds and hundreds of them. they looked like moss almost. here is where i made mistake #1. it is very, very, very important that you thin out your poppies. be brutal. each plant needs at least 8-10 inches of space around it. maybe give your sproutlings a couple weeks so you can see which ones are doing better. then chop a shitload of them down. clip them down instead of pulling them out, because you do not want to disturb the roots of the neighboring plants. poppies have a pretty shallow root system, so if the roots are intertwined you can fuck a lot of shit up.
now, i started thinning my plants out a bit when i realized they were a) tiny, and b) starting to bend over from their own weight. i sumrise that had i thinned them out on a better schedule, the the plants would have been able to hold their own better, but mine couldn't. it appears that this is a not uncommon problem with larger plants. mine cannot in any sense of the word be considered large (well, maybe to an insect, but you get the picture). the common refrain over at the .org was to thin them unless you had limited space. bullshit. take my word for it and thin them out. a plant with the proper space can yield 4+ large pods. if you don't thin them out you might get 40 pods in that same space, but they will be about the size of this: O. definitely not the kind of pod you will get any appreciable amount of latex out of. don't even bother trying - it's wasted effort.
now one of the questions i could never ask over at the .org was (and i couldn't find the answer anywhere): "how long will it take your plants to mature?" well, in my experience it was about 2.5 months. would it have taken longer had the plants had more room to grow? hard to say. i think it may have taken a couple weeks off the time at most. at the time of this writing my plants are flowering. they will probably continue to do so for a couple weeks. some of the lovely petals have fallen away, revealing a few decent size pods, but about a hundred pods that might make one dose of tea. maybe. if i'm lucky. i will probably just let the pods go to seed and try again. like the song about bill monroe says, "let the harvest go to seed.'
now, actual harvest is a subject poppies.org does cover in pretty good detail. i doubt i could add anything to the info there. if anyone has any questions about my personal experiences, feel free to ask.
in retrospect i will not say my experiment was a complete failure. after all, it was a good learning experience, and growing pretty flowers isn't exactly a worthless endeavor anyway. i'm sure next time i'll have better results.
yes yes, i know about poppies.org . however, they are not accepting registrations (not to mention they have even dumber slang then SWIM), so where does the n00b go to ask some questions? ah, yes, you will say that exalted site will answer all of your questions. well, in my experience, it won't. add to this the fact that the grow faqs there only cover the most basic of grow principles, and you will see the conundrum that the first time grower is in.
so i embarked on a small (2 x 6 by 6 foot plots) grow project, with the hopes of at least getting a small bit of latex for a personal smoking stash. now when to plant depends on where in the world you live. as i live in a northerly climate, i elected to plant in the early spring. a late frost pushed the date back a week or so. had i gotten around to planting the seedlings may have survived. i understand that people in more favorable areas can plant in the fall and winter their plants successfully. where i live got 3 feet of snow in a month last winter, so i don't think that's an option for me.
i should mention at this point that you should only try to grow p. somniferum if you are looking to cop a buzz. california, etc. poppies are worthless. there are several varieties of somniferum, but i am going to try and keep this short in scope.
about a week after i sowed my seeds broadcast stylee, i got my first few sprouts. well, not a few. hundreds and hundreds of them. they looked like moss almost. here is where i made mistake #1. it is very, very, very important that you thin out your poppies. be brutal. each plant needs at least 8-10 inches of space around it. maybe give your sproutlings a couple weeks so you can see which ones are doing better. then chop a shitload of them down. clip them down instead of pulling them out, because you do not want to disturb the roots of the neighboring plants. poppies have a pretty shallow root system, so if the roots are intertwined you can fuck a lot of shit up.
now, i started thinning my plants out a bit when i realized they were a) tiny, and b) starting to bend over from their own weight. i sumrise that had i thinned them out on a better schedule, the the plants would have been able to hold their own better, but mine couldn't. it appears that this is a not uncommon problem with larger plants. mine cannot in any sense of the word be considered large (well, maybe to an insect, but you get the picture). the common refrain over at the .org was to thin them unless you had limited space. bullshit. take my word for it and thin them out. a plant with the proper space can yield 4+ large pods. if you don't thin them out you might get 40 pods in that same space, but they will be about the size of this: O. definitely not the kind of pod you will get any appreciable amount of latex out of. don't even bother trying - it's wasted effort.
now one of the questions i could never ask over at the .org was (and i couldn't find the answer anywhere): "how long will it take your plants to mature?" well, in my experience it was about 2.5 months. would it have taken longer had the plants had more room to grow? hard to say. i think it may have taken a couple weeks off the time at most. at the time of this writing my plants are flowering. they will probably continue to do so for a couple weeks. some of the lovely petals have fallen away, revealing a few decent size pods, but about a hundred pods that might make one dose of tea. maybe. if i'm lucky. i will probably just let the pods go to seed and try again. like the song about bill monroe says, "let the harvest go to seed.'
now, actual harvest is a subject poppies.org does cover in pretty good detail. i doubt i could add anything to the info there. if anyone has any questions about my personal experiences, feel free to ask.
in retrospect i will not say my experiment was a complete failure. after all, it was a good learning experience, and growing pretty flowers isn't exactly a worthless endeavor anyway. i'm sure next time i'll have better results.
. If you want more information, and if you havnt already visited here, check out Erowids info on growing right 
the pods from people's gardens!
![:\](https://bluelight.org/xf/BL_Images/Orig_Emoji/wrygrin.gif "wry grin :\")