I have officially planted the first seeds of 2025.
Back in 2021 I had a mystery flower grow right up through the middle of my large bed of hostas. I shared the pretty bloom here on the blog and while I didn’t know what it was many of you did—it was a poppy.
Chitter fell in love with the flower and decided to buy seed and plant her own poppies. We didn’t have much luck in getting them to come up the first year or so.
I stumbled across a video of a lady saying she struggled with growing poppies too until she discovered the best way to plant them.
Her advice is to plant poppies in snow. It couldn’t be easier. Just throw the seeds down on top of the snow where you want them to grow.
The process seemed crazy, but we tried it that year and sure enough the next summer we had poppies.
Yesterday I took a pack of Danish flag poppies and a pack of Somniferum blend poppies and threw them down on the snow in a couple of places.
I’ve used a similar method for years to spread flowers here and there. A good example are the columbines that come up every spring in my flower beds. After they go to seed I break off a seed pod and take it to another area where I’d like columbines to grow and just throw it down. The seeds manage to take care of themselves until the following spring when they grow into columbines.
I hope the poppy seeds on snow method works as good this time as it did before.
Last night’s video: Sledding in Appalachia =s Big Fun for Me!
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Tipper, that smile on your face while you were sleddng was priceless! Its been a few years since I last went sledding but I always loved going super fast down a hill! I usually had one of my children or grandchildren with me. Great memories but no videos. This is wonderful that you will have these to look back on. Next year you will be adding the boys to the sled on those smaller hills!
Ive never had any luck with poppys and will try this trick on our next snow.
Tipper I’m going to try and give the Rangers to brighten the David Crockett Birthplace State Park in Tn it was washed away in flood devastated. Hope it brighten Park up this spring . ( washed Stonecypher Cabin away found 3 logs )
Ricky-I’m so sorry. I had not heard about that damage.
Snow is still laying for the next one so I’m buying some today and planting. Thanks for sharing.
Everyone have a great day!
You and your family made me so nervous while I watched the video of you all sledding! The giggles and laughter told us how much fun it was. You can throw Cockscomb flowers down in the snow and they will come up like the poppies and reseed year after year. Kentucky has a highway beautification program that plants red poppy seeds for miles along the expressways. I wonder if the seeds are thrown down on top of snow. They are in full bloom when Memorial Day travelers or vacationers pass through toward the end of May and post about the breathtaking sight on social media.
How cool ! I look forward to seeing the beautiful flowers !
I loved your sledding video ! So happy for you !
That’s a great idea! If we get any more snow, I definitely want to try this as poppies are one of my favorite flowers. Enjoyed seeing everyone having a wonderful time sledding. I think I laughed as much as y’all did.
I remember you planting some after you had viewed someone on you tube I think showing the perfect way to plant Poppy seeds. I watched it at that time and thought wow that is great. I’m trying it too.
I really enjoyed watching your sledding videos!!! Those of Corie and Katie and you and Matt. Wonderful to hear the giggles and I thought a couple times ya all were going to take out Matt and Paul:) What was great too was Tipper, I think your excitement and energy to run up those hills was amazing! God Bless you all!
A word of advice for Tipper and the members of the younger generations, enjoy sledding and all of the bending, climbing, walking without pain and many other things you are now able to do while you can. Like several of the older generations of us have said in the last few days we can no longer do many of those things because of Arthur and stiff, painful joints. The only sledding I could do know would be on my big rear end after I had fell and busted it. Snow and ice is dangerous for us because of the danger of falling. I meant for this to be humorous but yet at the same time truthful. I saw a sad news story last week of a girl going into water while sledding and either drowning or freezing to death, before she could be rescued. Some of her rescuers had to be admitted to the hospital. It did not give her age or what type of water, she was from NC.
We seldom had enough snow to sled on, but if we did back in my young days, me and some neighbor kids would sled down a steep country road hill in front of their home on the hood of an old car. We didn’t have to worry about traffic, it was fun going down but work dragging it back up the hill.
Randy, my older brother used to tie a car hood to his truck and pull us all over our farm fields. He would go so fast in circles we would be beside him and it would flip us off the hood. Kinda dangerous really, but we weren’t thinking of that! Fun times.
who would have thought, poppies are determined to grow, praise God,
My mother grew poppies at one time. She didn’t know the secret of planting in the snow. But she did learn that they can’t be transplanted. No matter how much dirt you scoop up with the plant, if you try to move them, they will die every time.
What a wonderful idea Tipper, Home Depot just put out all of their seeds and I’m going to go get some poppies, I love them. I take the dead spent flower heads from Canterbury bells, Delphium, Hollyhock and foxglove and shake them around the garden. If they sprout, they sprout, if they don’t they don’t. Foxgloves are the best. Poppy seeds need light to germinate and that’s why your approach is so successful. I never used to read the packets when I planted my seeds, when I finally did I was so embarrassed!
I was told many years ago by an old man I worked with that seeding on snow was an excellent way to sow grass seed also. Not only would the snow maybe let you see your seed but it gets watered and fertilized right at the start . It seems so backwards but is just life for seeds. None of them would work if they couldn’t withstand the lowest temperatures reached wherever they can grow. Instructions on seed packets are so very general, kinda a ‘one size fits all’ but there likely are better ways that are seed-specific. For many woody plants, the US Forest Service wrote a “Woody Plant Seed Manual” that has a lot of specifics about best ways to handle their seed. Hope you get glorious results!
Tipper & Katie, when I moved to Alaska many years ago o me of the first flowers I saw growing along the road was poppies. They were a beautiful mix of vibrant colors. In the cool of Alaska they grew all summer. Last year I had to move to Colorado and plan to grow some here.
Poppies are beautiful. They’re our state flower here in California.
How exciting, Tipper. Spring is my very favorite season of the year, when new growth starts, and everything is green. I need to go down to the store and buy me some poppy seeds and a few other seeds. I will spread them on the remaining snow in the space where I want to plant them. I’ve grown almost every type of flower over the years but not poppies and the ones you’ve shown on your channel this last summer were beautiful. Like Debbie I can’t bend down as much anymore but I still want to plant these flower seeds. Our weather here in Va has remained in the teens and twenties overnight and in the early morning and only warming up to the middle 30s. I watched you and your family sledding and having so much fun yesterday. I used to go sledding in Ohio where we had tons of snow each winter, but I wouldn’t dare do it now at my age. Are you going to plant any Dahlias? They are so beautiful. Mine have been coming up on their own for nine years. Praying for Granny.
Tricia-I hope to. They are so pretty 🙂
What a great idea!
I hope you have a bounty of beautiful poppies come summer!
Chitter is very interesting like you, Tipper. She loves growing flowers, the garden, chickens, and her little son-the best flower of all in the garden of life! I never saw seeds strewn in snow, but apparently today is the day I’m catching on to new ways of seeding! I must say I think it’s the coolest thing since snow and I might call this method “toss and go!” I’m just certain it will work out because it’s easy and the Lord’s specialty is bringing life out of cold dark places even human hearts! Best wishes with the poppies and after seeing Chitter’s, I might have to grow some…lol You are trend setters of the garden life!!! Bless you all in everything you do. Keep the cold ones of NC, TN robbed of warm homes by Helene the Toricane in thoughts and prayers as they live in tents and campers through the most brutal winter in YEARS!
Tipper, I spread my Columbines around like that also! And it’s fun to see where they show up on their own. I’ll have to try sowing some poppies. we have a snow cover right now, and I love poppies.
Well, this literally made my jaw drop. I have poppies on my wish list because of your channel, but I haven’t yet ordered the seeds. I never imagined planting them in January!! I hope I still have time to get the seeds and throw them down before the weather gets too warm!
What a novel concept! Sowing your seeds the way they would naturally seed themselves! I never would have thunk of that! {poke}
Oh, I’m going to try this method if we get anymore snow this winter. Thanks for the info. Glad you got your snow this year and got to sled!
Poppies are on my list of favorite flowers. I have the orange Oriental flowers growing in my front flower bed and I’ve tried to get them to grow in other places with no luck. I’ll have to try your method and see if that works.
I remember reading about some men carrying zip lock bags of seed such as brown top millet with them when they were hunting or out and about in the woods and fields during the winter months . They would scatter/sow these seed on any bare spot of land frost had spewed up. In the spring the seed would come up making small food plots for both game and non game birds.
I will try that as I was also unsuccessful in growing my seed packet of poppies last time around.
Poppies are so perdy. I use to have beautiful orange ones in my beds. I can’t care for my beds anymore, so all my flowers now have to be in containers, or in my garden. I always had beautiful beds and people would stop and ask about the flowers. My back doesn’t allow so much stooping anymore. I can hardly wait to see these bloom in your beds! The picture on the package looks so perdy!
We have been below zero for a couple of days and supposed to get to 25°-30° tomorrow, but back way below zero next week. It’s so very cold. Praying for people to be warm.
God bless!