Here you see the results of five minutes work and a cost of less than £2. I originally bought a packet of Californian Poppy seeds from my local supermarket some four years ago, came home and promptly put the seed packet in a drawer in the office where it lay until now. I was having a tidy-up and saw the seeds had passed their sell-by-date so I threw the packet in the bin. Upon further reflection I thought as I had nothing to lose, I would retrieve the Eschscholzia seeds from the bin and broadcast the seeds on a bit of recently dug open ground. This involved ripping open the packet and simply throwing the seeds in onto the soil in a random way.
This is an incredibly quick and simple technique which can be delegated to any child who likes throwing things! Its a great way to get children involved in the garden and the results come after about ten days, depending on the weather. I didn’t even bother covering the seeds with a fine layer of soil, or watering the site after sowing. Gardening is all about emulating the natural environment as closely as possible. In the wild, Poppies, and other annuals such as Forget-me-Nots ( Mysotis),and Love-in-a-Mist ( Nigella), fall where they seed, or nearby, depending on the Summer breezes, so that’s what we try to copy. Simple, eh?
Next year in the Spring, why not try sowing your own seeds. You can even use the freshly-collected seeds of Nigella in cooking, or collect them in a brown envelope to store for the following year, or give some to your friends and family. The reason we use brown envelopes is that they don’t have chlorine added to the paper to make it white. Seeds don’t like to be stored in a chlorine-infused environment, and neither would I. Happy gardening!