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  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum) cultivation

I live in Sydney, and I think that other Australians will find that the general supermarket seeds have been somehow treated and that they won't fully grow. I would love to be proven wrong. I flung some out my window once and immediately they sprung up in little shoots, but them promptly died for no reason, - I could only conclude that they'd been treated.

If anyone on the east coast has grown poppies successfully I'd love to hear!
 
I live in Sydney, and I think that other Australians will find that the general supermarket seeds have been somehow treated and that they won't fully grow. I would love to be proven wrong. I flung some out my window once and immediately they sprung up in little shoots, but them promptly died for no reason, - I could only conclude that they'd been treated.

If anyone on the east coast has grown poppies successfully I'd love to hear!


Couldn't help having a little chuckle :) at this bit "but then promptly died for no reason, - I could only conclude that they'd been treated"

Lots of variables that could have had them shoot but then die. The seedlings are definitely fragile and picky about being in moist but not too moist soil. They probably got drowned by too much water or dried up IMO.

If they had been treated I'd guess they wouldn't sprout at all.


Poppies grow well in NSW and you can even find wild ones in certain areas.

Supermarket seeds are basically the same in NSW as anywhere else here. They're from Tasmania then go to distributors who wash/process and send them off around australia.
 
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In The US growing opium poppys is legal, untill you cut them to harvest the opium sap/gum inside. They can legaly be grown for "ornamental reasons" and if you are not caught cutting poppy heads and taking the resulting opium tar/sap then you can easiyl get away with it, as many people do. Also growing other non opium poppys nearby will help to hide the Opium poppys,but most US cops cannot look at a garden of poppys and tell the difference between an opium poppy strain and another non opium containing poppy..
 
Okay, good info here but does anyone know the best Zone for growing opium poppies??

Gardeners will know about Zones, for example in the States, Zone 6 and 7 located in the Pacific Northwest. One BLer claims areas of the coastal deep south unsuitable for P.Somniferum, yet poppies grow in similar tropical areas such as Laos and Vietnam, while others claim AZ, SoCal, NM, TX are better due to similar climate & soil as Afghanistan

coastal areas of the US south are fine for opium poppy growing,although they are to be planted earlier ,as intense humidity and heat combined is not ideal for the poppy, the basicly will grow anywere in North America..
 
Still waiting for an Australian to tell me he's grown poppies through to completion!
 
Still waiting for an Australian to tell me he's grown poppies through to completion!

Scroll up the page :) I'm from Australia.


Here's another south australia dudes 2010 crop -
IMGP0061.jpg


We had a perfect season this year which is why the plants are so damn big!
 
Damn!! Hey can you tell me whether poppy straw consists of pods post or prior to their being lanced?
 
Damn!! Hey can you tell me whether poppy straw consists of pods post or prior to their being lanced?

Commercial poppies don't get lanced at all so commercial straw is just the fully grown and dry pods and stems. I guess poppies that have been lanced could be called poppy straw as well.

CPS or Concentrate of Poppy Straw is the end product Tasmania exports. They crush up all the poppy straw into almost a dust then extract the alkaloids with water and chemicals, then send it on to the drug companies to make codeine, morphine, oxycodone etc.
 
So if you let a poppy plant grow until the petals drop and then just dry it out the latex doesn't lose any of its content? And is it known whether the content of the entire plant harvested in this way is higher or better/worse then the sap alone?
 
In The US growing opium poppys is legal, untill you cut them to harvest the opium sap/gum inside. They can legaly be grown for "ornamental reasons" ...

This is completely incorrect never mind a little off base for the Australian Drug Forum. Anyways under the Controlled Substances Act in the United States "Opium poppy and poppy straw" is Schedule 2 (item 3 if you want to know). Furthermore "opium poppy" is defined as...

(19) The term "opium poppy" means the plant of the species Papaver somniferum L., except the seed thereof.

Possession of anything other than the seeds is therefore illegal whether you plan to harvest it or not. Also by reading this mens rea no longer applies. The law in Canada is effectively the same though I am unfamiliar with Australia.

Canadian Controlled Drugs and Substances Act
Schedule 1
Opium Poppy (Papaver somniferum), its preparations, derivatives, alkaloids and salts, including...
...but not including
(37) Poppy seed
 
So if you let a poppy plant grow until the petals drop and then just dry it out the latex doesn't lose any of its content? And is it known whether the content of the entire plant harvested in this way is higher or better/worse then the sap alone?

It's still a matter of some debate when to harvest for maximum morphine content but the professionals just let it grow until it dries out, although this would probably be for reasons of easier processing as well as max content.

Yep the entire plant harvested at dry stage has much more content than the latex alone.

I lanced, I picked some early and let a couple dry on the plant. The lanced ones still had 'goodies' inside despite me bleeding for latex several times over a week or two. Didn't notice much difference between the ones I picked a little early (2+ weeks after petal drop) and the ones I let dry on plant.

Although having opium and smoking it was a nice novelty, lots of people - me included, prefer just ingesting the pods or making a tea. Comes on slower but much stronger.

Didn't find the fast onset of smoked opium to be that pleasant...maybe just something you have to learn to enjoy.
 
It's still a matter of some debate when to harvest for maximum morphine content but the professionals just let it grow until it dries out, although this would probably be for reasons of easier processing as well as max content.

Yep the entire plant harvested at dry stage has much more content than the latex alone.

I lanced, I picked some early and let a couple dry on the plant. The lanced ones still had 'goodies' inside despite me bleeding for latex several times over a week or two. Didn't notice much difference between the ones I picked a little early (2+ weeks after petal drop) and the ones I let dry on plant.

Although having opium and smoking it was a nice novelty, lots of people - me included, prefer just ingesting the pods or making a tea. Comes on slower but much stronger.

Didn't find the fast onset of smoked opium to be that pleasant...maybe just something you have to learn to enjoy.

Addiction = Pain
 
It can be vapourised off foil... i did it that way recently in vietnam!

They pulled the foil outta ciggie packs, lit it..burnt the paper away..then gave it to me and said "smoke...smoke!"

It has a very unique taste...reminded me of poppy seed muffins for some reason lol..


Seriously! Very weird taste...buti could see myself coming to enjoy it! Similar to the taste of deemers..dmt.
 
I enjoy the sweet taste of smoked opium. Some is sickly sweet in comparison to others. The dirty raw stuff with heaps of plant matter is terrible to smoke, but you can easily wash it down to a purer form for easy vaporizing with good old H2O and some elbow grease. All in all, I prefer to ingest opium by making a tea, otherwise I have to smoke heaps to get high due to my opiate tolerance and it just isn't fun...
 
anyone here tried the cooked flake opium? its supposed to be a little stronger than stadard latex opium, using the whole plant in the process, from what i've read it seems plausible...

see here for more details
http://www.drugs-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38937

apparently this guy learned the technique from the hilltribes-people in SE Asia, the pioneers of opium.

Any thoughts?
 
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Growing is quite simple depending upon your locale.

For the poster asking about the possibility of growing in the tropics... It is quite possible to grow in tropical environments if one utilises the proper variety and compensates for the heavy precipitation depending upon the season. The variety is super-important because after rosetting the plant needs longer nights for proper morphine formation. Usually people grow in the tropics, have fabulous results but when they harvest they net terrible yields with very poor morphine content.

Ideally you want granular soil with at least 70% moisture content and a pH of 6.5 to 7.5. For fertiliser, I will give the commercial values and any interested parties can do the math to adjust the numbers since I am pretty sure that noone here is considering planting at least a hectare.

Per hectare, prior to sowing, fully till 30 tonnes of manure topped with 90 kilos of granulated phosphate. The only other fertiliser will be applied at rosetting. At that point spread a double stratum of nitrogen and potash at a ratio of 105:70 kgs per hectare (for every hectare lay 105 kg of nitrogen, 70 of potash). This will boost your opium harvest by 30% so it is well worth the effort.

You need 3 kilos of seed per hectare. First, coat your seed with mercuran and then mix the seed with 3 kg of fine sand. Usually commercial growers till in rows 72 cm apart to leave room for irrigation machinery but in my case I broadcast seed (though it makes for a lot more expence to have labourers thin by hand square meter by meter). The mecuran will protect your seedlings from common disease, etc and the sand helps it to broadcast evenly, especially if there is any wind about.

From the point of sowing you just need to retain that minimal moisture content of 70% but when the spout they have to be watched. At their 2nd set of true leaves (plants have "baby leaves" much as humans have "baby teeth) they need to be thinned to 160K per hectare. Their 2nd (their last) thinning takes place after their 5th set of true leaves has fully opened and you want a final density of 110K per hectare.

From that 2nd thinning you just wait for rosetting to spread that nitrogen and potash and then cut back your irrigation for a moisture content of 50%. If yoy have above 50% at this point you leech out whatever morphine has been produced and stem formation of new morphine.

When your pods naturally drop their last leaves you need to wait 1 week and then begin walking your field(s) to observe their appearance. Each pod has a corona (crown) sitting atop it. As the plant grows the corona lays flat but between 7 and aeaw days AFTER that last petal drops the corone will become erect. At the same time there will be a change in colour to a bluish-green, and above the stem on the bottom of the actual pod there will be a faint beige ring that is only visible to the naked eye. When those 3 attributes are present the pod is at technical ripeness and needs to be lanced. If you wait just 48 hours you lose nearly 10% of your morphine. Wait 84 hours (1 week) and you lode 30% and it continues to decrease literally by the hour.

Generally you get 3 decent harvests off of each pod, with each lancing 48 hours apart. A lot of people believe its best to cut laye in the day but they are actually wrong. Optimally you want to lance betwen 12PM and 6PM. Then, brgin harvesting (collecting) at 5AM. 1 adult can handle 1/5th of a hectare per day so plan accordingly.

A poster said that commercial growers let the plant dry before harvesting. That is only true in Tasmania. Because of labour costs related to both their huge crops as well as Tasmania's isolated location it doesn't pay to manually harvest. There is also the additional factor of the Tasmanian Co-op aiming for thebaine and codeine (as opposed to morphine). If you aren't trying to net morphine manually harvesting is counter-productive. Letting the plants dry on the stock simplifies mechanical harvesting. They then do a whole-plant extraction very similar to the Kabay Process (aka Hungarian Method).

Their yields are a lot lower that way but because it gains cost-effectiveness in terms of labour it is well worth it. I have to add that they make a pretty penny by aiming for alkaloids other than morphine. Usually, codeine isn't obtained naturally. They methylate morphine to net codeine which drives the price of the alkaloud up. Whole-plant extraction bypasses the conversion. Thebaine is only present in miniscule concentrations and so utilising traditional methods don't render its production especially lucrative. Aside from whole-plant extraction the Co-op has a trademarked variety (actually 3) that have only negligible morphine content but do have astronomically high thebaine concentrations.

For the poster who said Persian White poppies have the highest morphine content, no, not true. It isn't even a variety per se. It is a marketing gimmick like companies that label Kratom as "Bali," etc. In reality the label means nothing.

The highest concentration, on average (as well as highest ever recorded) was a variety named "ZL29499," produced in the former Yugoslavia in a university programme. While the average in all varieties hovers around the 10th percentile, this variety topped out at 28%. Iranian and Afghan varieties are low producers.
 
I live in FL. and started my first poppy garden this past March. I bought 3 fairly large pots from a local shop. They are about 2'x3' and 12" deep. They even came with wheels on them so I can move them around my apartment balcony to chase the sun or hide from nosy neighbors. I chose 2 varieties online, Persian Whites & Tasmanian. The third pot I used grocery isle McCormick's. Well guess which pot is doing the best? McCORMICKS!!! They germinated 3 times as fast as the other 2(& about 95% germination rate) and are growing twice as fast! Hopefully come mid June I will be able to say how well they produce. I'm not spacing them at the recommended 8", more like 4". Hopefully this wont impede them too much, but I had such a good germination rate, that I just felt guilty thinning them out too much! (poor little guys!)
So far the weather here hasn't been too hot. But at what point should I worry about the heat? Can they tolerate 85 to 95 degrees? My next option would be to roll them inside into the AC if it gets too hot for them outside. But really don't want to bring them indoors unless I really have to though.
 
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growing ya own poppy plants

I just read an article where here in australia someone bought seeds from the local super market planted them & off they went. The amounts of plants that were made contained alot of opium.
He suffered from severe pain problems & used to eat some of the sap for the morphine to help with releif.

poppy plants are suppose to be easier to grow than marijuana & they sell the seeds down the super market.

Im just wondering why there isnt an opium epedemic where pot is everywhere.
 
with the way qulity is dropping everywhere i wouldnt be surprised if alot of people do start groing their own for short term use but teh amounts they would need to support a full on addiction would be way too much comapared to the amount someone makes with a hash plant for personal use
 
Crazy aussies,

How ate you mate,im not a rocket scientist but im pretty sure those poppy seeds are treated so that they cant be grown...otherwise if your friends are anything like my circle,all of oz would be a giant opium hut.

Never the less,next time you have a chunky steak pie or poppy seed bagel,pocket a few and have a lash..Tasy has fields grown by the CSIRO for pharmaceuticals , but i could be mistaken
 
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