I am looking for people with experience in growing papaver somniferum or Opium Poppy. In england it is way tooo cold to sow until mid spring. i was wondering if anyone has had any success growing indoors....

I managed to keep mine alive under a CFL but when i tried a pot under a hps at hieght it died.
The only ones looking healthy are ones i've planted in peat pots and put on a window sill.

Poppies like cool temperatures, limited water and shade. I have found it supprisingly hard to accomidate for them inside.

Its not worth growing poppies indoors (for the cultivation of opium)

There are so many problems when growing it:

1)Poppies are a cultigen. They like the company of other poppies. So you will need a large soil bed for multiple poppies
2)Most of the time they will just stop growing or become extremely slow at growing.
3)You cant transplant them (applies for indoors - outdoors and outdoors - indoors) the plant will either die or stop growing.

and the list goes on.


The reason your poppies died when you moved them from a fluorescent to a HPS is because the massive heat change. Poppies do not like being changed quickly. They need time to adapt and if they cant adapt, they will die.

Growing them indoors can be as easy as you make it.

Just keep in mind poppies are a cultigen and like the company of other poppies. I would recommend doing something like a ScrOG and have a large soil bed underneath the screen. This way after the poppies go from seedlings and start forming in their little cabbage/lettuce looking stage, the stem will start to come up. The idea behind the screen is so that you can easily sort the poppies between then so they dont bend over or get in the way of other poppies.

visit 2cidma i think his name is, visit his thread, he grows poppys, he actually disagrees with above post and states its VERY easy to grow

go look at the grow journal theres this dude growing poppies indoors he has pic and everything