Growing Blue Poppy From Seed

Obtain your blue poppy seeds from a seed exchange or from a fellow gardener’s thriving garden. Never purchase blue poppy seeds from a commercial source because the seed is so short lived that it may not survive after you plant it.

Moisten a seed starter mixture made up of peat, perlite and gypsum. Do not use potting soil or compost. The mixture should be moist enough to stick together if you squeeze it with your hands but it should not drip water.

Sterilize shallow seed containers in a bowl filled with warm water and 5 percent bleach. Rinse the containers with sterile water and wait for them to air dry.

Fill the containers to the top with the starter mixture and press the mixture down tightly.

Scatter the blue poppy seeds onto the surface of the mixture. Gently press them so they just make contact with the mix. Do not press the seeds under the surface of the mixture.

Place the containers in a cool, shaded room in your home. Ideally, the room temperature will dip below 60 degrees Fahrenheit at night. During the day, place seeds under a 40 watt fluorescent light that will provide exactly 12 hours of light.

Mist the seeds once or twice a day to keep them continuously moist. Wait as long as one month for the seeds to germinate.

Move the seedlings outdoors once they germinate, provided there is no longer any chance of frost or heavy rain.

Remove the seedlings with tweezer and transplant them into a sterilized 4-inch plastic pot, with just one seedling per pot. Try to touch only the leaf as you’re planting and avoid touching the root.

Fill the pot with the same starting mixture and make a hole in the mixture with your finger so the seedling will go into the same depth in the pot as it was in the starting tray. Firm the soil around the seedling.

Water the seedlings immediately after planting with half-strength, high-phosphorous fertilizers, such as a 5-15-5 fertilizer.

Plant the plants directly into the garden once they've grown to about 10 centimeters. When planting in the garden, select a well-draining area that is humus rich, such as soil that is lime and manure free and amended with mushroom manure.

Water regularly so the poppies never dry out.

Fertilize once every week on the watering schedule with a high-phosphorus fertilizer.

Remove any dead or dying flowers as soon as you notice them. This may help the surviving plants thrive, many of which may go dormant over the winter and re-emerge the next spring.