The Pink Tazzie

The Pink Tazzie

Wow !
Just thought I'd update. The Pink Tazzie that I crossed is actually quite uniform. Both plants now have 28 flowers / pods.
They are fantastic and even more prolific that the red opium poppy I have.

Interestingly, the new hybrid has taken on the size of the Tazzie but is more rounded. The amount of flowers/pods it has breaks any of my past records. The actual plant has 6 major stalks with each leaf area throwing off at least 2 flowers.
i cant wait to see what the seeds look like.
The Tasmanian seed (as you may know) is a blue large seed, and the red one has a small black seed.

More later,
Rachel.

http://papaver--somniferum.blogspot.com

BTW; Check out my other blog.....
Doubling Challenge

My Hybrid Poppies

My Hybrid Poppies !

I had crossed my Tasmanian Giant poppies with the strong strain of Red Opium Poppy that has always grown in our garden.

There are two test plants planted in different parts of the garden and they both look like this :

Impressive huh ?!!
The Flowers have a size of about 2/3 a sandwich plate.
The pods are around med-large size, but the best part is, each plant has so far produced exactly 23 flowers/pods.
I call them the Tasmanian Pink !

I'll save the seeds carefully and grow some in our hydroponics garden over winter.
Hopefully by next season I'll have enough to sell to others !

BTW, if you are interested in my red poppy seeds, you can always buy from me or contact me.

Poppies - The Beginning

Poppies - The beginning

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My love for poppies is really only very recent.

About 4 years agao I noticed a poppy plant in our garden and I asked my father where it came from and what is was (I live with & take care of him...).
He said it was an Opium Poppy that our family had always had over the road at our farm and it had been surviving at our current hous for 60+ years.

I got curious....
I saved some seeds, planted them, spaced them about 40cm apart and left them.
They came into flower in about 60 days but the surprise was how many poppies / pods they threw off.
The minimum they produced was 13-14 and my current record is 23 !
Anyway, I started saving the seeds and planting them each year... always the same strong healthy plant (strong in many ways...).

After a year I also bought some Tasmanian Giant seeds.
I grew these successfully and then started reading about hydridisation.

The Poppy is very easily cross pollinated so I experimented.

The Tas. Giant I had only threw off about 4-6 flowers / pods at the most.
This year IT HAPPENED !!!

I managed to cross the giant with the red and now I have a giant strain which has a minimum of 13-20 flowers /pods.

Isn't it impressive ?!!
The bees love it, too.
This plant was grown in a large pot so that I could control pollination.

I'll post more later.
Rachel.

Poppies - Papaver Somniferum (Tasmanian Pink above)