Mikado California Poppy Seeds

To the customer who had them fail after transplantation - as the directions on the packet indicate, all poppies are notoriously bad transplanters with their delicate, easily disturbed root structure and slow growth. Even the most delicate handed gardener is guaranteed to kill nearly every seedling during transplantation, if any do manage to survive it is out of luck, not skill. In order to have any chance of success transplanting poppies, wait until they are at least two months after germination with several sets of leaves and getting close to a foot tall, and even in that case it’s still likely to die half the time so in my opinion save yourself the disappointment and direct seed. The good news is they are quite cold tolerant, even surviving all but the hardest freezes over winter in zones 5-7, in 8 and above you can plant them basically any time of year and they will wait until the temps are right to pop up as long as they are kept safe from competing weeds (cover cloth is recommended since it is easy to disturb their roots while weeding) and you will have a much greater success rate. I had 80% fully matured to bloom with my patch last year sowed end of March when the coldest nights were still around 30, and that 20% is all the ones that germinated too close together and I had no choice but to pinch some in order to let their neighbors thrive. So I don’t think it’s fair to give a 1 star review for this reason, any more than a cactus seed deserves 1 star for not germinating…