The peony-flowered poppy plant often appears uninvited in gardens, perhaps from seed dropped by birds
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Q. Last year a friend gave me some poppyseeds that she gathered from plants in her garden. I don’t know what kind of poppy it is, but she described the plants as annuals, with large, wavy, blue-green leaves and big, flamboyant blooms. I’d like to grow them as accents in pockets of the vegetable plots. Can I plant the seeds outdoors? When?
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A. Your seeds are for the annual breadseed or peony-flowered poppy. The sturdy plants grow about a metre tall and produce single and double flowers in a gorgeous array of colours.
This poppy plant often appears uninvited in gardens, perhaps from seed dropped by birds. They self-sow. Once you’ve grown them, they usually will pop up here and there every year afterward.
Following bloom, seed pods develop and mature to a dry stage as seeds ripen within them. The seeds are used in baking.
March is my preferred month for sowing these poppies. Another lovely and useful annual flower I sow outdoors this month is calendula, which I often use as an edging for vegetable plots. It’s another easy, fast-growing annual flower available in a wide variation in the yellow, apricot, orange and cream range. The petals are edible.
Q. Over several years I’ve kept the same begonia tubers by storing them, frost-free, over the winter and taking them out of storage in March to start into growth again. Some of the tubers have grown broad, with many little pink nubs of growth. Can these begonia tubers be divided without damaging their ability to grow and bloom?
A. Large begonia tubers can be divided by making a clean slice through the tuber, top to bottom, making sure each piece has two or three little nubs of emerging growth.
When I divide tubers, as a precaution I let the cut surfaces dry for a few hours and then rub them with powdered sulphur before settling the sections into a lightweight, all-purpose potting mix for rooting.