Successes From The Garden - Poppies

In my Lessons From The Garden series, I posted about the less successful aspects of my garden and what I learned to do differently next year. In this next series of posts, I'll highlight the successes.

Poppies 

 

Every year I plant Hungarian Blue Breadseed poppies so that we can enjoy delicious baked goods in the fall and winter

Usually I just plant a few poppies on the edges of the garden beds or tucked into random corners, but that would only yield enough seeds for 2-3 batches of muffins or bread. So, this year I planted the center of a full bed with them.

In late winter, I scattered the seeds on the soil and watered them in. Two months later they were ready to be thinned 

Six weeks after that they were ready to bloom

The gorgeous purple blossoms were loved by the bees, ensuring good pollination and a large yield of seeds

The blossoms lasted a mere week, giving way to fat seed pods

After a month of drying in the early summer heat, the pods yielded a sea of beautiful blue seeds. Nearly cup of them in fact, enough for 8-10 batches of baked treats