Saving poppy seeds is rewarding from start to finish

Saving seeds can be a messy business, but in at least one case, it can be remarkably satisfying.

For many vegetables, seeds must be scooped out and cleaned of gelatinous goo before being dried for storage.

Seeds on many flowers are easy to harvest in their seed pods, but later must be separated from chaff, the dried outer husk that surrounds them.

But few things are more satisfying than collecting seeds from annual poppies. It is one of the last steps in the full growing process that is entertaining at every stage.

Annual poppies, particularly breadseed (or opium if you’re feeling cheeky) poppies (Papaver somniferum), are easy at every stage, but especially so at the end of their life cycle, when their seeds pour out of the round seed pods.

That efficient seed dispersal system means that they are also good self sowers, but I’ve had success direct sowing them at various times through winter. The most successful sowing attempts seem to be those done in early March, but the key to germination is moisture.

Judicious thinning of seedlings is needed, but the reward is a several-weeks-long parade of flowers, each only lasting a couple days and often unique in their look.

Peer into any open flower and more times than not you’ll find a bee blissfully bathing in pollen. Given the frequency with which that happens, it’s no surprise that self-sown poppies or those grown from previous years’ seeds are often a mix of what’s been grown before.

And then the architectural blue-green round seedpods become the next show, one that I enjoy even more than the flowers. Strip off the fading leaves and the bare stems create a huge amount of interest in the garden.

Last weekend, even as the last flowers on some plants were fading, seed pods on other plants had the telltale sign that seeds are ready for harvest: a distinctive rattle. Seeds fall out the holes at the top of the pod like a pepper shaker, but for even faster harvesting you can cut the “lid” off and pour the whole lot out.

In a matter of a few minutes, I’d harvested thousands of seeds and pulled out the now unattractive brown stems from the garden.

I marked the pods of a couple of particularly beautiful flowers in hopes of getting something similar in future years, but seeds from other plants are stored collectively.

I won’t know just what those seeds will produce until the whole process is repeated again next year. I can’t wait.