Kitchen Garden Forum

As you are all aware, next year is the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War. Various organisations are combining to get as many people as possible to grow some poppy's remembering all who gave there lives in that conflict and all conflicts since then. Please consider some for the garden or on the lotty.

Well without knowing I nicked some seeds of Ladybird from Harlow Carr yesterday - a good variety to use I would have thought.

Good idea. Will do that.

Oops! SH - apostrophe catastrophe alert!

Thanks for the reminder about poppies.

John

John. I stand corrected SM [hanging head in shame]

By rights, the poppies should be Papaver rhoeas.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papaver_rhoeas

I have tried to grow the true field poppies (Papaver rhoeas, as Alan says) in the past and have not found it easy. They don't seem to germinate easily and certainly won't seed themselves in subsequent years unless the soil is disturbed.

My garden has been overwhelmed with yellow poppy seedlings this summer,but I don't suppose these count !
I see in the press that there has been some opposition to this project by farmers, especially growers of wheat and barley crops, because once these poppies are in their fields, they are very difficult to eradicate.

I guess a happy medium would be to sow them in the hedgerows and the margins of parks, etc. or municipal flower beds, rather than making the lives of farmers more difficult. I think they probably have quite a difficult time managing their crops these days when some of the weedkillers they have previously used, have now been withdrawn.

I am all for rememberance and for learning of the folly of war but surely there are enough poppies in the country already?