Sal's Corner

[Sal Niner]

I found this group a couple of days ago and am very glad that I joined.  I've recently gotten into gardening as a very, very casual hobby when I found out that I was able to plant my favorite flower:  the California Poppy.  A photo chronicle of My Plants will be maintained at the following link:

 

http://www.petbrags.com/photo/albums/my-plants

 

I'll be adding more pictures to it as time goes on; so keep watching the album!  :-) 

 

Here is my first-ever California Poppy bloom:

 

 

I got the seeds to plant these flowers from the Wildflower Trading Company; more details can be found by clicking on my album link above.

 

Does anyone else here plant California Poppies or have experience with them?  If so, I'd like to hear from you.  Thank you.

 

Sal

[Wanda P]

I love it sal so pretty, thanks for joining and i shall feature you this week!

[Sal Niner]

Hi Wanda,

 

Thanks for taking a look at my pictures and for featuring my topic this week.  I hope you're enjoying the thread.

 

I plan to post more pictures both here on the thread and to My Plants album for you all to take a look at.

 

All the best,

 

Sal

[Sal Niner]

Happy Memorial Day in the USA to everyone!  :-)

 

Today, on Memorial Day, I took the following two pictures of my ever-evolving California Poppy flower bunch.  These are the second, third, and fourth blooms to have developed since the first two pictures were posted to this discussion thread:

 

 

If you look at the top edge of this picture above, you will notice a white spot with pink around its edges.  And a little bit to the right of that just under the green stalks are a couple of the fallen orange petals.  All that used to be my first California Poppy bloom of which I posted a picture on Thursday to this thread.  So what happened to that flower?  The winds have been blowing this bunch pretty hard lately.  As a result, the petals broke off and fell away.  I hope that this flower which was my first poppy bloom will re-grow...

 

 

I've been learning some pretty interesting things about these flowers.  Starting with...did you know that California Poppies tend to open up their petals to the rays of the sun when they are hitting them?  Did you know that they close their petals tight when the rays of the sun do not hit them anymore?  Well, I didn't know that until a few days ago!  In that regard, they behave a lot like Sunflowers do.

 

And just so you know what I mean when I say that these flowers close their petals tight when the rays of the sun no longer hit them, I will be posting pictures of what this looks like later on to this thread...so stay tuned for that!  :-)

 

Sal

[Wanda P]

Hi Sal, yes i do, i had a neighbor who was 89, and grew everything from seed and had a stunning yard with 100's of poppies as well as another plant i grew last year
these are called Gazanias, they too close up at night, these are very hardy and handled the cold well.. as the season goes on we will have more friends on posting gardens.. must run to bed. hugs ww

[Wanda P]

so fitting a pure yellow poppy for today!!

[Sal Niner]

Well, here I am writing you all on the closing of Memorial Day to bring you new pictures of my poppy flowers.  Remember that I did tell you all I was going to post how my poppies looked like when their petals are closed tight as a result of the sun rays no longer hitting them.  Here they are, five hours after the last couple of pictures on this thread and the sun has gone down:

 

 

In this picture above, you can see a little clearer that white bit with pink around its edges which used to be my first bloom that I was referring to earlier.

 

 

If you notice how each flower closed their petals:  two of them rolled up, while the other one flattened.  The rays of the sun are no longer hitting their petals, so they've closed up shop for the night. :-P lol  And so will I, on this thread for now...  :-) I hope you've enjoyed my pictures so far, as I plan to post more the further my poppy bunch develops.  I hope everyone had a great day, and goodnight from my flowers and me!

 

Sal