Gathering Seeds

I have been bitten once again with the gardening bug this year. Slowly learning more and more, and hopefully getting better at it. This year I have been collecting seeds. I have many ounces of arugula seeds from our prolific patch. Just recently I have begun collecting poppy seeds from California poppies that grow along Kincross under the pine tree.

What a silly hobby, right? Anyone with $10 can go to Home Depot and buy a bag of CA poppy seeds, huge bag, perhaps 8 ounces. So why bother collecting seeds at all? Well, hobbies tend to be things that take time and could easily be replaced by spending money. But it is the act of the hobby that is its own reward, and the satisfaction that you did it yourself.

I went out one morning with Sean to collect some poppy seeds. I got a few dozen pods that were turning brown, and put them in a plastic bag. I noticed that there were many pods that were open and whose seeds had fallen out already. Later that evening I went to the poppy patch to pick some more. Almost immediately, when I went to grab a brown pod, it exploded and sent seeds everywhere! I reached for another, and the same thing happened. I pushed up a fallen poppy plant and could hear numerous pops as brown seed pods "popped" open. And so I learned why poppies are called poppies. You would never learn that from a $10 bag from Home Depot.

Then I wondered - why are they popping now, when I did not notice this in the morning? The next morning I went out, and sure enough, the pods were not popping. I noticed that they felt moist. That evening when I went to pick them, they were popping once more, and felt dry. So it is related to humidity, and moisture content of the pods. I don't know if the plants themselves remove moisture from the pods on purpose during the course of a day, or whether the moisture is wicked out by the air against the attempts of the poppies to retain moisture.

But at least I have learned an important lesson. The bag I was using was a plastic zip-lock , bag, and I had sealed it after putting in the pods that first morning. When I opened the bag later that day, the pods inside were moist, and not popped open. I now store the unpopped seed pods in a plastic bucket for a while, so that they can dry and pop. Then the seeds will go into a plastic bag until I plant them.

I also have numerous Oriental, Shirley, and Mexican poppy seeds, whose pods look like little pepper shakers. But we are not too sold on these flowers. They are beautiful, but grow so tall that they fall over and look messy. CA poppies are shorter and less prone to falling over. So now we have a choice of what to plant next year.