Indoor CFL Poppy Grow

Hey guys. Been lurking here for a while and wanted to start growing. I'm too lazy and too cheap to order seeds online at the moment, plus, I dont want to have to invest in a carbon filter, etc etc and what not on a grow room just yet. And lastly I wanted to gain a little indoor growing knowledge first anyway...

So... I went down to the local super market and picked up a jar of McCormick poppy seeds and sprinkled the little guys on a fresh "pot" (read: new mop bucket holes) of soil under a 100w equivalent CFL. I did this about three days ago and now I have well over a dozen sprouts.

I DO have a camera and will be uploading pics, but right now there isnt much to look at. Probably tomorrow I will post some close ups on the little things, along with my setup.

Tomorrow I am also going to buy 6 more of the lights, a couple power strips, some zip ties, and some proper planters. I want to grow about 7 plants total. Dont think that will be enough to give me very much opium, but alas, its just a start, and is designed to be more or less "proof of concept".

If anyone has done a poppy CFL grow I would love to know how that turned out. My sprouts are looking fantastic right now, hopefully I can keep them that way. I do have some fertlizer (10-54-10) that I might start using in another 4 or 6 weeks, but we'll see. This isnt anything fancy right now. My next grow will probably be hydroponics. I would like to go with aero, or at least a hybrid aero/deep water culture, but again, we'll see how these turn out...

How many acres of poppies does it take to make a pound of opium? Poppies take 2 years to flower?

2 years whoa thats a long time if so if it true

you can buy special bread poppies that cluster flowers, still takes 2 years. Not suited for hydro being a dry type plant.

shitty i stay with my Maryjane

Two years? No way. Hah, if it was a two year crop, I would say screw that.

Actually its more of a 4 month/120 day crop. Here: http://opioids.com/opium/faq.html is a good place to get some information. The rundown is basically they like dryer-ish soil after they have sprouted, and basically you just keep some light on them throughout their grow cycle (they prefer "full sun" so I would imagine a lengthy light period). Theres all kinds of numbers floating around out there right now about what photo period is best, but I would be willing to bet they will do well regardless.

As far as getting a pound of opium, well thats hard to say. Obviously it comes down to the plan and so on and so fourth. Now bear in mind, the "ideal" spacing is about 8-12 per square meter, although up to 18 will work. Also each poppy plant will produce a range of pods, from one, to many (no concrete answer there). In asia, the average is 3-5 pods per plant. According to that link I gave you the average yield PER POD is 80 milligrams of opium. Up to 100, probably more with some varities, but 80 is the average they gave us. With roughly 500g in a pound, that would require 115 square meters of poppy, assuming they produce 80mg a pod, 3 pods to a plant, and 18 plants to a square meter.

With that being said, pardon my french but thats a lot of fucking opium. Average about 10% of that is morphine too, with another big chunk codeine. So that leaves you with roughly 50g of straight morphine. Considering most dosages, even recreational, are under a gram, you got enough to last a while.

Besides, I dont think opium is something you want to grow a lot of anyway. Its highly addictive and could really spell disaster. I think thats a good thing about growing it, once you picked up a habit, its all gone and your in for another 4 months of growing.

Oh one last thing, dont think just because your plants are dead and you've already harvested all the opium latex from the pods that your crop is through. Everything (so I've read) in the plant has SOME morphine content in it. Meaning you can take you dried pods, stems, leaves, and roots; grind them up into a powder and make a sort of tea out of it. If you dont want the tea, you can evaporate the water and be left with a sticky mess than you can eat. Apparently smoking that paste is a waste of time though. Sad.

Heres the plants (or rather seeds) after about 2 or 3 days on the soil (yes on, not in. I didnt cover them at all):


And about two days after previous picture:

Just a brief update...

I swapped out my 23 watt CFL for a 42 watt version (100w equivalent for a 150w), pretty big size jump, but it adds 1000 lumens. I also transplanted a number of seedlings to peat pots. I did it (I think) without really disturbing the roots at all. My tactic was to take a huge handful of dirt and set it in the pots. We'll see how they look tomorrow, which is also when I will enclose another picture of everything.

I would say I got at LEAST a 95% germination rate out of the McCormick seeds, and that was within only a couple days. Pretty good considering I got a whole bottle of poppy seeds now for about $5USD.

Tommorow or sometime I will go to the hardware store too and grab a second rectangular planter. With the size I am using, I plan to plant about 3 plants to a container. Plus my mop bucket haha. Seven plants, so we'll see what yields are. I will be growing these with what will likely be either 6 23w CFLs, or 4 23w and 2 42w. The 42w are kinda pricey, at least compared to the 23w, but for the extra 1000 lumens I will probably try and get as many as I can. I need to stop shoping at major retail outlets and start going to home improvment stores.

Lastly, depending how my job goes (or rather pay) I am seriously considering setting up a modest hydro setup. Not sure if it would be for poppies or not, but I dont know.

And for what its worth, the myth (yes myth) about opium being less potent if watered too much is debunked. Its semi-right in that the opium IS diluted, but if your going to dry/purify it anyway, then you wont see a loss in quality.

Someone mentioned earlier you cant hydro grow poppies, but check out "hydroponic heroin" at amazon (or google). I actually want to buy the book, but we'll see.

Nice, my only tips is more, more, more lights. And good call on the transplanting; from what I understand, poppy roots cannot be damaged/fucked with or the plant just dies.

I got 250 hens and chicks poppy seeds off amazon that I am off to plant and put under my 1000w hps.

Best

looks like you have done your homework prolly cheaper than flying to the golden triangle

What a shame too, since I love traveling. Oh well haha

If money permits I would love to actually get a HPS light or MH. I just cant cough up the dough right now. Thats another reason Im going with poppies right now too, since our "other plant" prefers so much light, and to get good yields you need that much light, I want to wait until I have a proper setup. Not saying poppies arent the same, but $5 for thousands of seeds is cheaper than $50 for 5 or 10.

I may end up going with 6 42w CFLs as primary lighting, and depending how big these get, I might add some secondary lighting on the sides using my leftover 23w CFLs. If I did that, then the grand total would be 6 42w CFLs, and at least 6, if not 9 23w CFLs which would be 26400 - 31500 lumens for 7 plants in about <10 square feet.

Oh but all that is down the line. Here is todays picture, taken no more than five minutes ago:



As you can see there are likely a couple dozen seedlings in the main pot itself (erm mop bucket). Im going to wait a couple days to make sure all my transplanted seedlings are doing well, and also to make sure I dont decide to grow more, and then I will cull the ones basically not growing in the center. At this point their growing at an almost universal rate. I may leave up to 4 plants in the pot and wait until they get older, then remove the three I dont like. Either way, there isnt going to be more than one plant in the bucket by the time they really start growing.

Do you know anything about the nutrient requirements; I noticed you said you had some fert, but is that specialized at all, or is it just what you have around?

All those cfl's sound about right.

I read that phosphate and potash (potassium) are primarily important. The page I read (I forgot which one, Im sure I could find it again if needed) said a "general purpose 10-20-10 fertilizer" would be fine. The one I got was 10-54-10, but the 54 is also for phosphate which is supposed to be rather important.

On top of that the soil is supposedly fertilized "for up to three months" so either way I wont be adding anything for at least a month or so.

What I might actually do, since I have 3 containers with plants, is try a different fert technique in each one and see which does best and go from there...

I know there are many different types of poppies, do they all have the good stuff in em? I have some red ones that grow here on there own so I was curious if I could get anything good from them?

Sure, but a couple things...

For one, while all poppies do have SOMETHING... Some have more than others. Ironically enough the chances of your variety being the good kind, are pretty good. What your wanting is Papaver somniferum. Now mind you there are practically endless variates of that kind, many colors many shapes and sizes as well, and most importantly alkaloid content. Regardless though you should be able to get something out of them.

Be warned though, if its in public (or open areas) scoring the pods to get the latex is entirely illegal. Bad enough poppies themselves are TECHNICALLY illegal, but scoring them is straight up a bad idea if you get caught. Just the same its unlikely.

Of course, you could slice the pods off and some stem (Id say about 10 inches of the stem to go with the pod, its a bit much, but your getting more from it). Dry the pod out, dump the seeds, powder the pods, boil, then drink the tea. Of course you can boil down said tea into a paste and eat that. Dont smoke it though, from what I've read its not worth it.

Also, when the plants are kaput, pull up the whole thing and dry the whole plants. From roots to any leftover pods. Do the same tea/paste treatment if you like.

Alright boys and girls, heres December 18th daily update:

First off, I want to refer to a youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR2fLGR4bBI . It is VERY informative about planting poppies and growing them. It even mentions when they are ready for harvest (and I dont mean for seeds). Happily enough its by a guy who sells seeds on ebay. I havent checked out his products yet (so for all I know, he doesnt sell them anymore) but regardless, its a good video.

Moving on to my poppies... Everyone is fat dumb and happy in my pots. The little buggers have their first real node coming in now, so I should be seeing a second pair of leaves coming out in a couple days now. Pretty exciting. Im surprised they are growing as fast as they are.

Well without further adieu, heres the pics:




Now you may notice on this last picture that one of the poppies is actually on its side, but is reaching for the light. What happened was, after I transplanted them I watered them and knocked this guy down. I figured he was a gonner, but nope. I had a 100% transplant success rate. Not a single one died, despite how many were knocked over, or even buried! (yes, one was buried, but he's up in the light today).

this looks fun and interesting, iim going to follow this out of curiostiy. good luck and it looks good

lol, if everyone here starts doing this, they're gonna say that growing bud is a "gateway" to growing harder stuff.

Well in my defense, I havent grown bud yet. hahaha

Besides, the yields are wayyyyy too low to sustain any habit.

thanks for the tip duster I shall give it a try in the spring

U can order China White poppy seeds right on ebay. If I'm not mistaken u can also get dried poppy pods. If you do some research u will find out which variaties are more potent very easily. Then just shop around for those seeds. It's just like w/ mary. The McCormic poppies will get something surely, kind of like schwag, but if u spring for some good genetics the reward will be much much greater. U have to start somewhere tho, so I compliment you for doing this!