Dear Helen: I have poppies similar to the one you pictured and described in a recent column. Does this sort of poppy yield seeds that can be used in baking? If so, how do you know when to harvest the seeds?
S.D.
The seeds are commonly used in baking. One of this poppy’s common names is breadseed poppy. It is also called peony-flowered poppy. The botanical name is Papaver somniferum.
The plant is a prolifically self-sowing annual, growing 60 to 90 cm tall, with large, wavy, blue-green leaves and big flowers with crinkly petals in a wide range of beautiful colours and bicolours. The blooms can be fully double, single, or semi-double.
The flowers eventually fade and the petals drop away to reveal a chubby, globe-shaped seed capsule topped by a cap-like structure.
The seed pods gradually fade to a light tan colour and, as the seeds ripen, little openings appear beneath the pods’ caps. At that point, I give the stems a gentle shake. When I can hear the seeds rattling loosely in the pods, and the pods are dry, I begin cutting the ripened seed pods from their stems and placing them in a paper bag, which I store in a cool, dark, dry closet until I have time to shake the seeds out of the pods for storage.
An alternative, if there is suitable storage room, is to leave the seeds in the pods and use them as needed like salt shakers to disperse the seeds over baking and in other cooking.
Emptied pods can be composted. Seeds remaining in the pods will provide more flowers in future years as the compost is used in plots.
Dear Helen: With the alarming rise in the cost of groceries, I’m hearing more gardening talk on growing as much food as possible in whatever space is available. There are terms in these conversations that I don’t understand. What do “succession” planting and “intercropping” mean?
V.G.
A succession planting is one that replaces a planting that has yielded a crop and been removed. One planting “succeeds” another just as the immediate heir to a throne succeeds a monarch who has died.
Several succession plantings are usually possible in July as garlic, broad beans, early pea plantings and spring greens are removed and composted. Emptied areas can be replanted with succession crops such as bush beans, lettuces and other leafy greens, and winter vegetables.
If you grow garlic, designate a space for the planting, preferably made in the third week of September and in a site that can be conveniently left unwatered during the late June and early July partial drying of the top growth prior to digging the bulbs. Use the space in the meantime for something that will be harvested by garlic planting time. Lettuce transplants would be a good choice.
If a planting that has been removed has grown and produced superbly well, the soil probably won’t need major enriching prior to making the succession planting. I usually just mix in a little compost, home-made or purchased, and make sure the soil is thoroughly dampened before planting
Container gardens can operate on the same basis of emptying spent plants and replacing them with fresh seedings or transplants after removing and replacing a top quarter or third of the planting mix with fresh.
For esthetic purposes, pots that are easily moved can be planted and held in waiting to replace pots that have been emptied or harvested. A relay system like this ensures a constant (and pleasant looking) supply of fresh foods.
Intercropping refers to growing small, fast-producing plantings in between rows of, and under and around, larger plants. For example, I never give lettuces, endive and escarole a site of their own. I tuck transplants around young squash plants and close by and alongside vertically trained pea rows and staked tomatoes. This year I edged plots growing broad beans with my earliest lettuces.
Dear Helen: Is it true that human urine can be used as a fertilizer?
R.I.
Yes, as long as the donor is healthy and not harbouring any bacterial, fungal or viral infection. The value of safe, disease-free urine is in its nitrogen content.
Enthusiasts I have read about keep containers in their bathrooms for collection purposes. Diluted half and half with water, the liquid can be used as a compost activator. It will also help to green up pallid looking plants.
