I absolutely love Oriental poppies but am having really mixed results with them. I'm in the SE which means we've had a long hot dry summer last year, followed by warm extremely wet winter, then virtually no rain since April. I do water my garden a bit ( attempt to as little as possible but enough to keep plants alive, still learning ).
I wonder if theres anyone in a similar region who has lots of them too?
On one side of the garden the foliage is lush, healthy, large. Blooms have very short stubby stems and are opening inside the crown.
On other side I have much smaller crowns, much fewer smaller blooms, but longer stems. These plants don't look anywhere near as healthy.
All full sun.
Red and white varieties.
All planted at same time.
Any ideas of why these problems might be occurring? How can I get healthy foliage and lots of long healthy stems like I see in pictures?
Thanks!