TRANSPLANTING PAPAVER SOMNIFERUM SEDLINGS

The seeds shown in this video are PURE POPPIES™ Afghan Blue Bush Poppy seeds which can bought here:
https://purepoppies.co.uk/product/afg...

This is the second video in this short series on transplanting Papaver Somniferum or Opium poppies, and in this one I want to focus on transplanting very young seedlings within the first week or so of their growth.

The very young seedlings that you can see in this video are growing in jiffy 7 peat pellets which is what we start nearly all of our seeds in and they are doing really well, its just that the amount of seeds in each pellet varies quite a bit, most of them have a few too many seeds growing and some don’t have enough, in act you can see that some don’t have any at all.

At this stage of their growth it's an ideal time to transplant a few of the seedlings from pellets that have too many growing, and transfer them to pellets that have none growing or only one or two. The seedlings that you are moving are otherwise going to have to be pulled out anyway when thinning, so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying this.

In the video you can see that these peat pellets are quite moist, and its important that they have an adequate amount of water in them before doing this as it will make it much easier and increase the success rate of the transplants - if your pellets are quite dry then you'll need to water them and wait for five or ten minutes to allow both the pellets and the roots to absorb as much water as possible.

The first two tiny leaves that you can see her are what’s known as the cotyl-e-don, which are the two embryonic leaves that are always the first to come out, and the next two that will appear after these will be what are called the first true leaves.

Strictly speaking germination hasn’t officially been completed until the first -two -true leaves have developed, so this stage you can see here is sort of mid-germination, even though its probably more common to say that they’ve germinated as soon as you see some green emerging.

Thanks for watching, post any questions in the comments section and I'll try my best to answer them.