...Papaver Somniferum(The Opium Poppy) Growing...

[NC420]

Oh yes, You will be the one nodding on the pods

 

[surffreak23]

Hell yeah, been perfect weather for ripening too, no rain and lots of sun! poppies are loving it but the Plush Berry is drinking faster than I can hand water it seems... Oh well, take the good with the bad....

 

[NC420]

Hell yeah, been perfect weather for ripening too, no rain and lots of sun! poppies are loving it but the Plush Berry is drinking faster than I can hand water it seems... Oh well, take the good with the bad....

It finally rained here, I was having to take 6 1gallon jugs down a field, up a path & then up the hillside to get to the plants...
Funny thing is, I just made my big brother help me water all 70 some plants yesterday...

 

[surffreak23]

Man NC that sounds like a pain... Murphy's law in action!

I have a good understanding about collecting the latex and then later using the dried pods for making tea so here it goes:

My poppies are doing great considering the conditions and sowing time! about to slice em up, some of em anyway... the rest will go into making bulk tar as Smashedbyhashish does. The way to keep the alkaloids coming is to make sure you don't slice too deep otherwise the seed development (related to alkaloid production) halts because it seeps into the pod and starts to rot/mold thereby making the pod weak for tea later on... (not to mention loosing the latex) Also as far as lancing the pods go, you can milk 1 pod over a 4-5 day harvest with 3-4 separate shallow cuts, working your way around the pod by a quarter at a time/day. It is easy to see the chambers of the inside of the pod from the indentations on the outside, using these as a guide, make your incisions vertically over the indentations (wall inside the pod) and you will run a low risk of cutting too deep. If you have a way of measuring how deep you cut, test your depth on one pod until it's right.

Found this info very helpful:
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In a pamphlet published and distributed free by the Turkish Soil Products Office, the following advice is given to growers with regard to the incision: [/FONT]

1. [FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]
   [*] The capsule must never be cut all round. Spaces should be left un-slashed between the extremities of the cuts in order that the capsule may continue to grow and the seeds ripen normally;
   [*] In order to obtain more latex, it is advisable to make several incisions (each covering a third or quarter of the capsule) at intervals of one day;
   [*] Incisions made on clear, sunny, calm days give the best results. In warm districts it is preferable to make the incision in the evening, and in cool districts in the morning. It should be borne in mind that rain washes away the juice and that wind makes it fall to the ground.
   
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[FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Incision. The incision of the poppy capsule is a very delicate and expert operation. Incisions which are too deep or too shallow or which are made too early or too late give bad results. The cut must be a shallow one but it must also be deep enough to allow the drops of latex to flow down outside. Incisions made in the middle of the day when the sun is shining give bad results and there will be hardly any flow of juice. It is therefore preferable to make the incisions either in the morning or in the evening. [/FONT]

I also live in a densely populated neighborhood... With the night/morning harvest rather than the morning/night, you can actually do the lancing under cover of darkness and come to scrape it early in the morning before people are caring about anything but coffee! (make sure you don't have sprinklers on that night or your opium will be washed away!)

I will be posting on how to make a 4,5 or 6 blade [FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Amasya[/FONT] (pod lancing tool) in a bit...

 

[Clyde]

Hi guys

Here's a couple of pics of my poppies today. It was windy so they're a bit blurred.



As I said in an earlier post, I'm going to harvest them for tea, and not cut the pods for latex. After reading above that cutting them increases the overall production of alkaloids from a harvest, I'm sorely tempted to do it, but I share my yard with neighbours and I don't want to attract unwanted attention.

Can anyone tell me if these guys are near harvest time for pod tea? Or should I wait till they start turning yellow/brown?

 

[surffreak23]

How many days old are they since flowering? They sure look ready to come down.... Do you want there to be useable seed left over? If you do I would suggest letting a couple pods go brown on the plant, just barely, then cut them and hang them upside down from their stems; and drill the tops if you have a closed vent variety...
Whatever you do if you follow the same timing rules for the latex and harvest green in the morning or evening there will be more potency in the above ground material...

---------- Post added 08-11-2011 at 05:17 PM ----------

Forgot to add that traditionally the pods are left on the plant until brown for tea but you run the risk of rain washing the good stuff away...

 

[Clyde]

They're round about three weeks old, surffreak. Some less, but the biggest are about three weeks. Maybe I'll harvest the oldest and leave the others for a while?

It's been pissing without end here for weeks and no sign of change so I'd be a bit worried about them losing all their goodies if I let them go brown. I'd like to keep some seed, just in case these turn out to be sooper-dooper high-potency - you never know. But, I could leave a just few to fully mature and harvest the others while green, I suppose.

Cheers for the info, mate.

 

[Clyde]

Just read through the thread again and see you recommend around 28 days, surffreak, so I guess there's no hurry for me to harvest yet.... but, I'll maybe try one or two this weekend as I'm getting impatient - been hitting the ol' kratom a bit lately, but it just doesn't deliver that high intensity nod that the poppies do - the kind when you're sitting up awake and you know you are coz you're looking down at your shoes and then you open your eyes and you realize it was a dream.... I love that feeling... : )

 

[surffreak23]

Just smoked A 50/50 mix of lanced opium and hash oil, Damn that was tasty! :smoke: Forgot how much I love the mixed opiate high... About to extract 7 plants or so (if I don't fall asleep), that I lanced last night, we'll see how much they give me... You could do what I'm doing; I'm sure you saw the video that Smashed posted on how to make the tar, you could do that (add some alcohol with the water) with half your crop and let the rest go to seed so you have nice big pods for tea and reseeding later and something to tide you over now... Basically treat the extraction kind of like like making Iso Hash. with the green poppy pods. Also I recommend trying the seeds, they are very tasty when immature (and very nutritious anytime) and I'm buzzing off the ones I just ate before I smoked any... Sucked on the pods after I scraped em too, super bitter! That's a very good sign... Not bad for a late sow and poor lighting... This by the way is coming from someone who is prescribed 50X 15mg Oxycontin per month, I am very tolerant to opiates and these poppies are still doing the job...

Looks like you have much bigger pods than I do Clyde (4 cm, my biggest), I'm sure you will be pleased! +rep for your good grow in suburbia!

 

[surffreak23]

I'd like to keep some seed, just in case these turn out to be sooper-dooper high-potency - you never know.

If you look into breeding poppies you will find that the have a complex system for pollination and gene swapping that makes controlling the outcome of the seed crop almost random in it's potency. I would just be happy to have the free seed...

Here is just an explanation of a real life historical series of tests done by the Turkish dept. of agriculture on trying to breed a potent poppy that can stand up to the weather... :

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Technical Work for the Improvement of the Poppy Plant

The Yesilköy Agricultural Station has, for some fifteen years past, been engaged in technical work for improving the quality of the poppy plant. Research is conducted on selected specimens which appear to have suitable properties. The quantity of opium obtained from each plant and its morphine content are ascertained. If the analysis gives positive results, the seeds of the plant in question are sown the following year in a separate lot. The plants obtained are then observed throughout the period of growth and the following characteristics are determined:

1. The quantity of opium obtained per plant;
2. The morphine content of the opium obtained;
3. The size of the capsules;
4. Resistance of the stalk to wind and rain;
5. Resistance of the plant to frost and drought;
6. The yield in seeds obtained per plant:

It is also noted whether, as often happens with poppy plants, the parent plant has been produced by cross-pollination.
The work began in 1934 and has continued since then and in this way many choice specimens have been selected and observed. In the very first year specimen num- ber 1964 from Merzifon displayed very remarkable characteristics. The opium collected from this plant amounted to 2.440 grammes and had a morphine content of 24 per cent. This means that, theoretically, a field sown with the seeds derived from this plant would, at the rate of 15 plants per square metre, give a yield of about 366 kg. of opium per hectare, which on the basis of a 24 per cent morphine content would give about 88 kg. of morphine.
Unfortunately, the characteristics met with in any one plant are rarely hereditary. This was the case with specimen number 1964 and with hundreds of·other specimens selected since then. Thus, the descendants of plant number 1964 included plants which gave only 0.060 gr. of opium with a morphine content of 7.3 per cent. These figures would correspond to 9 kg. of opium and 0.657 kg. of morphine per hectare.
All the characteristics of the parent plant vary in the descendants. Take, for example, one of the most important: morphine content of the opium and let us see what has become of the very high morphine content of three parent plants in their descendants.
Morphine content of single plant (per cent)
Minimum, Maximum, and Average content for the whole lot planted (per cent) Descendants of a selected plant from:



Amasya: min 7.30%, max 28.60%, avg 21.58%
Afyon: min 11.70%, max 24.10%, avg 19.32%
Denizli: min 8.90%, max 25.70%, avg 19.50%
Even these results would be very satisfactory if the characteristics were inherited. This was not the case and, furthermore, most of the plants with remarkable characteristics showed very little resistance to bad weather.
The purpose of selection is not to find plants which possess remarkable characteristics in one particular respect but to find healthy and normal plants with good powers of resistance which give a satisfactory average yield. This has not yet been achieved. The work of choosing new specimens and selecting their descendants is being continued, every care being taken to avoid cross-pollination that might influence the descendants' characteristics.
The station has also experimented in artificial hybridization, taking, for example, a plant which gave an abundant harvest and another which was specially resistant to atmospheric conditions. These experiments have not yet given satisfactory results.
Work of this kind for the improvement of seeds is always very complicated. Even in the case of plants which are not cross-pollinated many years elapse before results are achieved. With a plant like the poppy which is often cross-pollinated by its neighbours the characteristics vary still more and the work is made more difficult.
Poppies in Turkey are plant populations with varying characteristics. One and the same field will contain plants producing opium with a 7 per cent morphine content and others for which the corresponding figure is 28 per cent.
If a plant with a high opium content is selected, the descendants of that plant do not retain that characteristic and will very often show a divergence as great as that mentioned above.
It is never possible to tell how many years of work must be done in order to find a plant which will transmit all its characteristics. Nevertheless, there is always a possibility of finding such a plant. It is also possible to find a mutation (spontaneous variation) which gives descendants with constant genes.
The station is making observations on hundreds of different plants and analyses as many as 5,000 specimens a year.
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