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Hippie3 · 03-05-06, 07:45

DUTCH COMMERCIAL POPPY CULTIVATION
An informational article by Wiccan_Seeker

INTRODUCTION

The Dutch have got a tradition of commercial Poppy cultivation on their own soil. They are among the few nations that are furthest from the equator, yet still manage to commercially compete in the international poppyseed trade. During the second World War and in the 1950s Holland experimented with extracting Opium alkaloids from harvested Poppy capsules but this has not proven to be economically viable.
Holland has significantly taken part in the “East Indies” (Asian) Opium trade until the 1800s but on its own soil has not engaged in Opium production due to the high cost of labor. Dutch Poppies can produce Opium that is as high in quality as Turkish Opium, the world quality standard, but in significantly lesser amounts per Poppy capsule leading to an overall far smaller yield.

In Holland Poppies are either grown on farmlands of many acres for production of poppyseed, in small patches for semi-commercial production of poppyseed and dried Poppy capsules for floral arrangements and finally in personal garden patches for the beauty of their flowers and capsules as well as for private use of collected Opium and Poppy capsule infusions for inebriating and medicinal uses.

This article will outline the cultivation and harvest characteristics of Papaver somniferum var. “nigrum” when sown in a cool, temperate climate and will focus on the semi-commercial and private cultivation of smaller patches of Poppies. The information density of this article is unusually high so please read carefully.

This article is written for informational purposes only and the author cannot be held responsible to anything directly or indirectly related or assumed to be related to this text, it’s content or assumed meaning thereof. The information contained herein is a consolidation of multiple offline and online information sources and by no means advocates the breaking of any law. Be warned that many things and acts surrounding the Poppy plant are illegal in many countries and that misuse of Poppy products may cause injury or death, and carries the high probability of physical and psychological addiction. The Poppy has been a grace to many, but the damnation of many more.

THE DUTCH CLIMATE

Dutch Poppies are generally cultivated in the province of Zeeland and the adjacent west part of Brabant, which lie close to the cost and tend to be more moderate in climate then the rest of Holland, as well as one of the major agricultural areas of the small country. Poppies tend to be sown in spring after the last frosts have passed, which is in March to April. As an “emergency crop” it can be sown as late as early May but then will yield far less poppyseed than is economically viable.
Given the life cycle of 120 days the Dutch Poppy-growing season thus stretches out from March until August. If you look at the climatologic statistics for those months in that region you will notice a steady progression from an average temperature of 6’C/43’F at sowing time to 18’C/65’F monthly average temperature at harvest time.
During this time this area experiences an even 60-75mm precipitation, which after subtraction of evaporation yields a positive precipitation balance of 10-25mm/month.
From March onward the local sun exposure is 110-125-200-200-200-200-125 hours per month respectively. Holland lies in Climate Zone 8 (average annual minimum temperature -12 to -7’C = 10-20’F) while Papaver somniferum is hardy until Hardiness Zone 7 (AAMT -18 to -12’C = 0-10’F) which means that seeds shed in summer and fall will survive the Dutch winters and sprout in spring.
All this paints the picture of a cool, wet climate that has little sun exposure but despite this the tough Poppy thrives in Holland to the extent of allowing commercial poppyseed cultivation.

PREPARING THE SOIL AND FERTILIZING

Holland grows annual crops of between 500-10.000 hectares of Poppies, mostly in Zeeland province and western Brabant. Poppies can be grown after many kinds of crops in “crop rotation” and can be regarded as universal in that respect. The soil needs to be prepared to yield a very fine sowing bed, as the seed is very small and slow to germinate. Many Poppy patches fail because of bad soil structure (crumbly clay) as Poppies prefer a fine, loose soil that drains well. It has been general practice to start out with 8-12 grams of Nitrogen fertilizer per square meter, given at the time of sowing, with Potassium and Phosphorus being added to meet soil analysis. Of particular importance are Nitrogen and Phosphorus.

A convenient way to fertilize small personal patches as practiced in the Third World which is endorsed by the FAO is the use of human urine, which weds the advantages of biological fertilizer with the rapid assimilation and availability of chemical fertilizer. In this virtually odorless practice one adult’s urine of one day is diluted with 5-10 volumes of water and used to fertilize one sq meter for the entire growing season. Trivial as it may seem this corresponds to 14gr of Nitrogen, 1.5gr of Potassium and 1gr of Phosphorus plus trace minerals which is sufficient for an entire season, fully biologic and incapable of harming crops if properly applied. The Nitrogen will be fully bio-available in 1-2 weeks. Urine is acidifying and said fertilization spends 1.5 ounce of lime (calcium carbonate) per sq meter from either the soil or through addition to balance pH.

Recently there has been experimentation to split the fertilization in two doses, one given at sowing time and the second at the onset of flowering. This increases yield and the likeliness of a good crop. For the small patch farmer it can be advantageous to continuously fertilize, but over-fertilization harms and in extreme cases kills the plant.

SEED AND SOWING

The seed is very fine and if fresh it can yield 1.000 seedlings per gram of seed. It is usually treated with TMTD to decontaminate it as fungal diseases are the Poppy’s only serious plagues. Old seed often germinates poorly and seed of poor quality ought to be treated in any case to assure a well-planted field.

The goal is to end up with 30-60 healthy plants per square meter, This tends to lead to smaller plants and smaller capsules then in tropical countries but a greater certainty of a good crop as the space of weak or dying plants is immediately claimed by it’s stronger neighbors which leads to strong Darwinian selection while at the same time it allows for greater cultivation setbacks: the fewer plants will produce more and bigger capsules and the cost of sowing seed is entirely unimportant compared to the yield of a successful crop.

In theory one kilo of poppyseed is entirely sufficient to yield a million poppies on two hectares of farmland, but in practice this amount is impossible to sow out commercially. Therefore commercial growers usually use 2-3 kilos of poppyseed per hectare (0.2-0.3gr/sq meter) and some even go to 0.5gr/sq meter, but in that case thinning is required to avoid yield reduction due to overcrowding. Often the seed is mixed with an inert material (such as white sand) to bulk up the volume for convenient sowing. A particularly advantageous mixture is that of one ounce of poppyseed with five ounces of White Clover. White Clover will shield the germinating Poppies from weeds and in fact fixates Nitrogen from the air to enrich the soil.
Poppies are sown when the frost has passed, usually in mid-April but it can even be sowed in early May. The earlier Poppies are sown, the greater the yield will be as optimal sun exposure is preferable. Poppies can take a bit of frost but are fragile to it in the seedling stage. Poppyseed is to be sown very shallowly, if covered at all.

Poppies can be sown in three ways.

The most convenient commercial way is to sow it in rows. Per meter there are three rows and the goal is to get ten to twenty healthy plants per row per square meter to end up with the desired 30-60 plants. This is accomplished by sowing more seeds and once they have come up using a 5-inch wide hoe to isolate plants by weeding perpendicular to the rows. Sowing in rows is the standard commercial way of poppy-farming as all stages in the growth cycle from sowing to harvest can be done with common farming machines instead of the far more expensive manual labor.
Sowing in rows is the technique used for the vast commercial multi-hectare poppyfields.

The semi-commercial smaller grower with a substantial patch tends to favor broadcast sowing, where the seed is tossed about widely by hand from a pouch worn around the waist. Broadcast sowing is the technique most often used in the tropical poppyfields and is favored by “guerilla farmers”, being people who sow in the wild as it is done on the slash-and-burn Opium Poppy fields of Asia.

The third method is highly labor intensive and favored only by private cultivators of very small patches. It basically consists of poking 30-60 shallow holes evenly across a square meter and dropping a few seeds in each hole, sprinkled between the fingers like salt. If you divide a sq meter up into squares of 5x5 or 6x6 inch and sow some seeds in the middle, to leave one plant per square, you have created the ideal growing space for the Commercial Dutch Poppy, the seed of which is the often praised Dutch culinary poppyseed used mostly in baking bread and rolls. Poppies can be grown in pots, indoors or outdoors, as well, it can thrive in throwaway plastic 5oz coffee-cups with a draining hole but best results are obtained from 5-6 inch pots which have the added benefit of measuring out the optimal growing space if put side-by-side in squares.

GUERILLA FARMING

Poppies thrive on disturbed soil and are hardy up to Climate Zone 7, strongly re-seed and on most soils require no fertilizer or watering. This makes them excellently suitable for guerilla farming in most parts of the world. If you look at Guerilla Farming as it is done in western countries (without slash-and-burn methods) then this usually is done in one of two ways.

Broadcast-Prepared is the way most commercial Opium fields and garden patches are created. This is a successful technique that entails raking a piece of soil that supports weeds to both remove the weeds and loosen the soil, and then sowing poppyseed on the seedbed, treading it and leaving to create the next patch. The energy spent in this method is the manual labor of raking, but it yields a high certainty of successful germination. The other method can be called:

Broadcast-Unprepared. This method consists of broadcast-sowing Poppyseed on unraked soil which has not been worked in any way. If the areas are well-colonized (such as grassy meadows) the successful germination rate can shrink to almost zero but on semi-bare ground, sowing before most weeds have come up, germination rates can be quite good. The energy spent in this method is the cost of the additional sowing seed that is required because a successful germination rate of 1% can be considered high. Sowing upon worked farmland or ground disturbed for road construction etc. falls under “Broadcast-Prepared” and successful germination rates can be very high. Broadcasting and not treading the seed, in the proximity of an ant-hill, often constitutes to feeding the ants because the seeds are 45% oil and high in protein, and the perfect size for an ant to haul off to it’s hill.

A curious device used for poppyseed guerilla farming is the “poppy-gun”. The “poppy-gun” consists of a short wide tube (like the inner roll of toiletpaper) closed off on one end with the loose rubber skin of a balloon. Some seed is dropped into it (10 grams still account for 10.000+ viable seeds) the bunch of seeds is grabbed and drawn back through the balloon like a rock in a catapult, and released, so that the seed is flung through the air up to 25 yards like fine buckshot, spreading out more efficiently then can be accomplished through broadcasting.

Be aware that guerilla farming changes the ecosystem where the seeds are introduced and that, unless confined to designated patches, it is disruptive to the local flora which means Broadcast-Unprepared techniques are to be discouraged according to common environmentalist ethics.

HARVESTING

Poppyseed should be allowed to ripen on the plant, which results in the plant wilting and drying while standing in the field. Totally unripe poppyseed of the Nigrum variety is white, then turns purple-red and ripens to a steel-blue color. At this time birds will start to take interest in the capsules and may break them to get to the nutritious seed. Poppyseed “runs” easily, which means that if a bag or Poppy capsule has a small hole, most or all the seed will run out of it like sand through an hourglass. Bird pecking is detrimental to the harvesting of Poppy capsules as well, and spilled seed will come up as a weed in next year’s crop, causing over-seeding or growing like a weed among the species then planted in the crop rotation program.

The seed should be dried well and kept in the dark on a well-ventilated dry place, preferably in bags of fine cloth, semi-commercial growers often use pillowcases for the purpose awaiting purchase by bakers and herbalist shops.

The Dutch harvest around 80-300 grams of poppyseed per square meter, with a good yield being about 120 grams.

Poppy capsules from Dutch culinary poppies tend to be walnut-sized.

For florist purposes the prettiest poppies are selected and typically there will be 50-200 poppy capsules per square meter, with 100 poppy capsules being average. The poppy capsules are picked when they are dried and bound to bouquets that typically hold 100 capsules. The poppy capsules are picked with stem and sold intact with seeds to not damage the capsule.

For apothecary purposes poppy capsules were gathered in the distant past, and the pharmacopeia dictated they should be gathered with 4 inches/10 cm of stem below the knots and freed of seeds to yield the “drogery” called Fructus Papaveris Sine Semine (Poppy Capsules without Seeds). The yield of Poppy capsules from Dutch Culinary Poppies lies between 50-200 grams with 100 grams from 100 capsules being typical. If standardized Opium of 10% Morphine content is taken as the standard, then the ripened unincised Poppy capsules contain 0.5-10gr Opium per square meter within them, with 2-4 grams of contained Opium being typical.
The poppy straw without the capsules contains one-tenth the concentration of Opium within them, so they are usually discarded.

The alkaloid content of poppy capsules increases as the capsule ripens, then diminishes somewhat as the poppyhead dries out on the stem. Snapping the dried poppy capsules off of their stems is the preferred method of harvesting Poppy products for apothecary purposes in guerilla farming as one can rapidly harvest far more opium equivalents by stem-snapping then through pod-lancing even though gum Opium would be the preferred product.

If for apothecary purposes the poppy capsules are lanced they will yield an Opium which can be as strong as Turkish Opium, but far lesser quantities of it. While the Tropical Poppies on average yield 80mg of Opium per Poppy capsule the Dutch Poppy, mostly because of the poor weather stays far behind that and produces, on average a mere 20mg. Even though far more labor intensive the high density of Poppy capsules per square meter of Dutch Poppies might still yield 1-4 grams of Opium per square meter, two grams on average, which rivals the best poppyfields were it not that the smaller stature of Dutch Poppies and their high sowing density makes it near impossible to lance within a field of them, as treading and brushing against them becomes unavoidable. The resulting lanced poppy capsules still contain significant amounts of Opium but are mostly depleted by the lancing.

HARVESTING SUPERIOR SEED

Poppies both cross-pollinate and self-pollinate to yield capsules and seed. The improvement of Dutch Poppies until now has not been intensive and mostly is done by selection from populations, even though selective pollination has been performed in the past. The Dutch Poppies are not GM because genetic manipulation bears great stigma in especially the health food sector where Dutch poppyseed is highly esteemed for it’s flavor, texture and culinary oil production.

Selection from population is a practice that is even commanded by the Bible as “saving the best grain for next year’s planting”. Selection criteria vary for the purpose for which they are cultivated. A florist lays emphasis on more, prettier, bigger flowers and an esthetic plant. An Opium gatherer often lays emphasis on fewer but bigger capsules which yield more Opium with less labor involved. A Poppy capsule collector (for florist or apothecary purposes) would lay emphasis on the number of poppies and wants them as well-shaped as possible.

Dutch Culinary Poppies are improved upon criteria that meet the demands of the poppyseed trade. A smaller, tougher plant of reduced biomass which is more resistant to molds and plagues and has superior growth characteristics aimed at providing a healthy crop that yields the highest reliable yield of poppyseed, and it does so by the strategy of more plants with more somewhat smaller capsules, instead of fewer larger plants with fewer but larger capsules.

Dutch Culinary Poppies are ideal for those who are looking for a superior producer strain of poppyseed and walnut sized poppy capsules for florist or apothecary purposes that is improved to give reliably high yields in cooler, less sunny climates.

03-05-06, 07:45	#2 (permalink)
Hippie3 DUNG DEALER Join Date: Feb 2001 Posts: 43,266	DUTCH COMMERCIAL POPPY CULTIVATION An informational article by Wiccan_Seeker INTRODUCTION The Dutch have got a tradition of commercial Poppy cultivation on their own soil. They are among the few nations that are furthest from the equator, yet still manage to commercially compete in the international poppyseed trade. During the second World War and in the 1950s Holland experimented with extracting Opium alkaloids from harvested Poppy capsules but this has not proven to be economically viable. Holland has significantly taken part in the “East Indies” (Asian) Opium trade until the 1800s but on its own soil has not engaged in Opium production due to the high cost of labor. Dutch Poppies can produce Opium that is as high in quality as Turkish Opium, the world quality standard, but in significantly lesser amounts per Poppy capsule leading to an overall far smaller yield. In Holland Poppies are either grown on farmlands of many acres for production of poppyseed, in small patches for semi-commercial production of poppyseed and dried Poppy capsules for floral arrangements and finally in personal garden patches for the beauty of their flowers and capsules as well as for private use of collected Opium and Poppy capsule infusions for inebriating and medicinal uses. This article will outline the cultivation and harvest characteristics of Papaver somniferum var. “nigrum” when sown in a cool, temperate climate and will focus on the semi-commercial and private cultivation of smaller patches of Poppies. The information density of this article is unusually high so please read carefully. This article is written for informational purposes only and the author cannot be held responsible to anything directly or indirectly related or assumed to be related to this text, it’s content or assumed meaning thereof. The information contained herein is a consolidation of multiple offline and online information sources and by no means advocates the breaking of any law. Be warned that many things and acts surrounding the Poppy plant are illegal in many countries and that misuse of Poppy products may cause injury or death, and carries the high probability of physical and psychological addiction. The Poppy has been a grace to many, but the damnation of many more. THE DUTCH CLIMATE Dutch Poppies are generally cultivated in the province of Zeeland and the adjacent west part of Brabant, which lie close to the cost and tend to be more moderate in climate then the rest of Holland, as well as one of the major agricultural areas of the small country. Poppies tend to be sown in spring after the last frosts have passed, which is in March to April. As an “emergency crop” it can be sown as late as early May but then will yield far less poppyseed than is economically viable. Given the life cycle of 120 days the Dutch Poppy-growing season thus stretches out from March until August. If you look at the climatologic statistics for those months in that region you will notice a steady progression from an average temperature of 6’C/43’F at sowing time to 18’C/65’F monthly average temperature at harvest time. During this time this area experiences an even 60-75mm precipitation, which after subtraction of evaporation yields a positive precipitation balance of 10-25mm/month. From March onward the local sun exposure is 110-125-200-200-200-200-125 hours per month respectively. Holland lies in Climate Zone 8 (average annual minimum temperature -12 to -7’C = 10-20’F) while Papaver somniferum is hardy until Hardiness Zone 7 (AAMT -18 to -12’C = 0-10’F) which means that seeds shed in summer and fall will survive the Dutch winters and sprout in spring. All this paints the picture of a cool, wet climate that has little sun exposure but despite this the tough Poppy thrives in Holland to the extent of allowing commercial poppyseed cultivation. PREPARING THE SOIL AND FERTILIZING Holland grows annual crops of between 500-10.000 hectares of Poppies, mostly in Zeeland province and western Brabant. Poppies can be grown after many kinds of crops in “crop rotation” and can be regarded as universal in that respect. The soil needs to be prepared to yield a very fine sowing bed, as the seed is very small and slow to germinate. Many Poppy patches fail because of bad soil structure (crumbly clay) as Poppies prefer a fine, loose soil that drains well. It has been general practice to start out with 8-12 grams of Nitrogen fertilizer per square meter, given at the time of sowing, with Potassium and Phosphorus being added to meet soil analysis. Of particular importance are Nitrogen and Phosphorus. A convenient way to fertilize small personal patches as practiced in the Third World which is endorsed by the FAO is the use of human urine, which weds the advantages of biological fertilizer with the rapid assimilation and availability of chemical fertilizer. In this virtually odorless practice one adult’s urine of one day is diluted with 5-10 volumes of water and used to fertilize one sq meter for the entire growing season. Trivial as it may seem this corresponds to 14gr of Nitrogen, 1.5gr of Potassium and 1gr of Phosphorus plus trace minerals which is sufficient for an entire season, fully biologic and incapable of harming crops if properly applied. The Nitrogen will be fully bio-available in 1-2 weeks. Urine is acidifying and said fertilization spends 1.5 ounce of lime (calcium carbonate) per sq meter from either the soil or through addition to balance pH. Recently there has been experimentation to split the fertilization in two doses, one given at sowing time and the second at the onset of flowering. This increases yield and the likeliness of a good crop. For the small patch farmer it can be advantageous to continuously fertilize, but over-fertilization harms and in extreme cases kills the plant. SEED AND SOWING The seed is very fine and if fresh it can yield 1.000 seedlings per gram of seed. It is usually treated with TMTD to decontaminate it as fungal diseases are the Poppy’s only serious plagues. Old seed often germinates poorly and seed of poor quality ought to be treated in any case to assure a well-planted field. The goal is to end up with 30-60 healthy plants per square meter, This tends to lead to smaller plants and smaller capsules then in tropical countries but a greater certainty of a good crop as the space of weak or dying plants is immediately claimed by it’s stronger neighbors which leads to strong Darwinian selection while at the same time it allows for greater cultivation setbacks: the fewer plants will produce more and bigger capsules and the cost of sowing seed is entirely unimportant compared to the yield of a successful crop. In theory one kilo of poppyseed is entirely sufficient to yield a million poppies on two hectares of farmland, but in practice this amount is impossible to sow out commercially. Therefore commercial growers usually use 2-3 kilos of poppyseed per hectare (0.2-0.3gr/sq meter) and some even go to 0.5gr/sq meter, but in that case thinning is required to avoid yield reduction due to overcrowding. Often the seed is mixed with an inert material (such as white sand) to bulk up the volume for convenient sowing. A particularly advantageous mixture is that of one ounce of poppyseed with five ounces of White Clover. White Clover will shield the germinating Poppies from weeds and in fact fixates Nitrogen from the air to enrich the soil. Poppies are sown when the frost has passed, usually in mid-April but it can even be sowed in early May. The earlier Poppies are sown, the greater the yield will be as optimal sun exposure is preferable. Poppies can take a bit of frost but are fragile to it in the seedling stage. Poppyseed is to be sown very shallowly, if covered at all. Poppies can be sown in three ways. The most convenient commercial way is to sow it in rows. Per meter there are three rows and the goal is to get ten to twenty healthy plants per row per square meter to end up with the desired 30-60 plants. This is accomplished by sowing more seeds and once they have come up using a 5-inch wide hoe to isolate plants by weeding perpendicular to the rows. Sowing in rows is the standard commercial way of poppy-farming as all stages in the growth cycle from sowing to harvest can be done with common farming machines instead of the far more expensive manual labor. Sowing in rows is the technique used for the vast commercial multi-hectare poppyfields. The semi-commercial smaller grower with a substantial patch tends to favor broadcast sowing, where the seed is tossed about widely by hand from a pouch worn around the waist. Broadcast sowing is the technique most often used in the tropical poppyfields and is favored by “guerilla farmers”, being people who sow in the wild as it is done on the slash-and-burn Opium Poppy fields of Asia. The third method is highly labor intensive and favored only by private cultivators of very small patches. It basically consists of poking 30-60 shallow holes evenly across a square meter and dropping a few seeds in each hole, sprinkled between the fingers like salt. If you divide a sq meter up into squares of 5x5 or 6x6 inch and sow some seeds in the middle, to leave one plant per square, you have created the ideal growing space for the Commercial Dutch Poppy, the seed of which is the often praised Dutch culinary poppyseed used mostly in baking bread and rolls. Poppies can be grown in pots, indoors or outdoors, as well, it can thrive in throwaway plastic 5oz coffee-cups with a draining hole but best results are obtained from 5-6 inch pots which have the added benefit of measuring out the optimal growing space if put side-by-side in squares. GUERILLA FARMING Poppies thrive on disturbed soil and are hardy up to Climate Zone 7, strongly re-seed and on most soils require no fertilizer or watering. This makes them excellently suitable for guerilla farming in most parts of the world. If you look at Guerilla Farming as it is done in western countries (without slash-and-burn methods) then this usually is done in one of two ways. Broadcast-Prepared is the way most commercial Opium fields and garden patches are created. This is a successful technique that entails raking a piece of soil that supports weeds to both remove the weeds and loosen the soil, and then sowing poppyseed on the seedbed, treading it and leaving to create the next patch. The energy spent in this method is the manual labor of raking, but it yields a high certainty of successful germination. The other method can be called: Broadcast-Unprepared. This method consists of broadcast-sowing Poppyseed on unraked soil which has not been worked in any way. If the areas are well-colonized (such as grassy meadows) the successful germination rate can shrink to almost zero but on semi-bare ground, sowing before most weeds have come up, germination rates can be quite good. The energy spent in this method is the cost of the additional sowing seed that is required because a successful germination rate of 1% can be considered high. Sowing upon worked farmland or ground disturbed for road construction etc. falls under “Broadcast-Prepared” and successful germination rates can be very high. Broadcasting and not treading the seed, in the proximity of an ant-hill, often constitutes to feeding the ants because the seeds are 45% oil and high in protein, and the perfect size for an ant to haul off to it’s hill. A curious device used for poppyseed guerilla farming is the “poppy-gun”. The “poppy-gun” consists of a short wide tube (like the inner roll of toiletpaper) closed off on one end with the loose rubber skin of a balloon. Some seed is dropped into it (10 grams still account for 10.000+ viable seeds) the bunch of seeds is grabbed and drawn back through the balloon like a rock in a catapult, and released, so that the seed is flung through the air up to 25 yards like fine buckshot, spreading out more efficiently then can be accomplished through broadcasting. Be aware that guerilla farming changes the ecosystem where the seeds are introduced and that, unless confined to designated patches, it is disruptive to the local flora which means Broadcast-Unprepared techniques are to be discouraged according to common environmentalist ethics. HARVESTING Poppyseed should be allowed to ripen on the plant, which results in the plant wilting and drying while standing in the field. Totally unripe poppyseed of the Nigrum variety is white, then turns purple-red and ripens to a steel-blue color. At this time birds will start to take interest in the capsules and may break them to get to the nutritious seed. Poppyseed “runs” easily, which means that if a bag or Poppy capsule has a small hole, most or all the seed will run out of it like sand through an hourglass. Bird pecking is detrimental to the harvesting of Poppy capsules as well, and spilled seed will come up as a weed in next year’s crop, causing over-seeding or growing like a weed among the species then planted in the crop rotation program. The seed should be dried well and kept in the dark on a well-ventilated dry place, preferably in bags of fine cloth, semi-commercial growers often use pillowcases for the purpose awaiting purchase by bakers and herbalist shops. The Dutch harvest around 80-300 grams of poppyseed per square meter, with a good yield being about 120 grams. Poppy capsules from Dutch culinary poppies tend to be walnut-sized. For florist purposes the prettiest poppies are selected and typically there will be 50-200 poppy capsules per square meter, with 100 poppy capsules being average. The poppy capsules are picked when they are dried and bound to bouquets that typically hold 100 capsules. The poppy capsules are picked with stem and sold intact with seeds to not damage the capsule. For apothecary purposes poppy capsules were gathered in the distant past, and the pharmacopeia dictated they should be gathered with 4 inches/10 cm of stem below the knots and freed of seeds to yield the “drogery” called Fructus Papaveris Sine Semine (Poppy Capsules without Seeds). The yield of Poppy capsules from Dutch Culinary Poppies lies between 50-200 grams with 100 grams from 100 capsules being typical. If standardized Opium of 10% Morphine content is taken as the standard, then the ripened unincised Poppy capsules contain 0.5-10gr Opium per square meter within them, with 2-4 grams of contained Opium being typical. The poppy straw without the capsules contains one-tenth the concentration of Opium within them, so they are usually discarded. The alkaloid content of poppy capsules increases as the capsule ripens, then diminishes somewhat as the poppyhead dries out on the stem. Snapping the dried poppy capsules off of their stems is the preferred method of harvesting Poppy products for apothecary purposes in guerilla farming as one can rapidly harvest far more opium equivalents by stem-snapping then through pod-lancing even though gum Opium would be the preferred product. If for apothecary purposes the poppy capsules are lanced they will yield an Opium which can be as strong as Turkish Opium, but far lesser quantities of it. While the Tropical Poppies on average yield 80mg of Opium per Poppy capsule the Dutch Poppy, mostly because of the poor weather stays far behind that and produces, on average a mere 20mg. Even though far more labor intensive the high density of Poppy capsules per square meter of Dutch Poppies might still yield 1-4 grams of Opium per square meter, two grams on average, which rivals the best poppyfields were it not that the smaller stature of Dutch Poppies and their high sowing density makes it near impossible to lance within a field of them, as treading and brushing against them becomes unavoidable. The resulting lanced poppy capsules still contain significant amounts of Opium but are mostly depleted by the lancing. HARVESTING SUPERIOR SEED Poppies both cross-pollinate and self-pollinate to yield capsules and seed. The improvement of Dutch Poppies until now has not been intensive and mostly is done by selection from populations, even though selective pollination has been performed in the past. The Dutch Poppies are not GM because genetic manipulation bears great stigma in especially the health food sector where Dutch poppyseed is highly esteemed for it’s flavor, texture and culinary oil production. Selection from population is a practice that is even commanded by the Bible as “saving the best grain for next year’s planting”. Selection criteria vary for the purpose for which they are cultivated. A florist lays emphasis on more, prettier, bigger flowers and an esthetic plant. An Opium gatherer often lays emphasis on fewer but bigger capsules which yield more Opium with less labor involved. A Poppy capsule collector (for florist or apothecary purposes) would lay emphasis on the number of poppies and wants them as well-shaped as possible. Dutch Culinary Poppies are improved upon criteria that meet the demands of the poppyseed trade. A smaller, tougher plant of reduced biomass which is more resistant to molds and plagues and has superior growth characteristics aimed at providing a healthy crop that yields the highest reliable yield of poppyseed, and it does so by the strategy of more plants with more somewhat smaller capsules, instead of fewer larger plants with fewer but larger capsules. Dutch Culinary Poppies are ideal for those who are looking for a superior producer strain of poppyseed and walnut sized poppy capsules for florist or apothecary purposes that is improved to give reliably high yields in cooler, less sunny climates. __________________ visit dial-a-hippie .