These corn poppies all started from some seed I got a while back through the Seeds of Diversity Canada member seed exchange.(@seeds_diversity)
When I first grew them out they were all red and pretty similar to one another.
I saved the seed and grew them out again. 1 or 2 pink flowers appeared amidst the 100s of plants I was growing.
For a number of years, I just Ignored the occasional pink flowers and thought they add a little something to the red.
But 4 years ago someone on the seed team noticed a dusky red flower that was pretty stunning.
So I decided to try to get more of those flowers.
That basically means, I harvested the seeds from the dusky flowers separately than the rest. And then I planted them out in a separate patch the next year.
There were more dusky flowers in that next year. I saved the seed from the dusky flowers in that generation and repeated the whole process.
Now we have 3 populations of Corn Poppies.
One that is still red.
One that is moving to dusky – about 15% of the way there.
And one that is a lighter pink.
These pictures are some of the corn poppies from all the populations that caught my attention this week .
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One other note about emerging diversity.
This generation, I’m starting to also see some plants with smaller flowers than the rest.
Another population to select!!
My next free online workshop is on Thursday July 28 at 2pm Eastern …
