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igenlodeI have been harvesting linseed from my flax plants; without any tools it is a laborious task consisting of crushing each seed-head individually between my fingers to release the slippery seeds from their capsule chambers, then letting the wind winnow the resulting fragments in the palm of my hand. I've had two goes at it so far and cleared perhaps half the seed-heads. Each one contains half a dozen or so seeds, and there are many flowers on each of my half-dozen plants -- I shall probably end up with a couple of tablespoons of seed, at a guess, which is a lot more than the teaspoon or so I got last year from a single random plant.
The long orange poppy didn't appear to be germinating, so I sprinkled a lot more seed on the soil and now, of course, have scores of tiny seedlings which are evidently all poppies! The other (unknown colour) long-headed poppy seed still doesn't seem to be doing anything, and I should probably give up on that, since I have successful germination from the one that I know to be the orange variety I was looking for.
There are still a few late-budding field poppies opening from time to time on the spent plants, although they have almost all gone to seed and the Oriental poppies are long since over.
The only identifiable thing that is growing in there is a mesembryanthemum seedling -- ironically, they seem to have done *so* well this year that they are popping up as weeds in places where I didn't sow them at all, like in large tomato pots! All the 'official' ones have come up dark pink, which is a bit disappointing as they were yellow and white and pale pink before; I don't know if it is bcause I managed to sow seed all from the same plant :-( Therefore I am leaving all the 'wild' ones to grow undisturbed in order to see if I end up with some of the other colours...
The long orange poppy didn't appear to be germinating, so I sprinkled a lot more seed on the soil and now, of course, have scores of tiny seedlings which are evidently all poppies! The other (unknown colour) long-headed poppy seed still doesn't seem to be doing anything, and I should probably give up on that, since I have successful germination from the one that I know to be the orange variety I was looking for.
There are still a few late-budding field poppies opening from time to time on the spent plants, although they have almost all gone to seed and the Oriental poppies are long since over.
The only identifiable thing that is growing in there is a mesembryanthemum seedling -- ironically, they seem to have done *so* well this year that they are popping up as weeds in places where I didn't sow them at all, like in large tomato pots! All the 'official' ones have come up dark pink, which is a bit disappointing as they were yellow and white and pale pink before; I don't know if it is bcause I managed to sow seed all from the same plant :-( Therefore I am leaving all the 'wild' ones to grow undisturbed in order to see if I end up with some of the other colours...
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Date: 2023-07-19 07:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-19 08:06 am (UTC)