"Eddy" wrote in message
...

I have a coffee mug full of poppy seeds. (It looks like a cup full of
ground coffee powder.)

Poppies appear in our garden every year, and in every unlikely and
unwanted place. Last year I decided to take action by letting them
flower (the splashes of brilliant red are very pleasant) but to then
snip off the flower-heads before they had time to scatter their scores
of tiny seeds all over the place. So a year later I've shaken all the
seeds out of the heads and now have a coffee cup full of them - cornered
in a cup rather than scattered all over the garden.

It would be nice to have poppies in the grass verges of the lane that
runs past the house (and well away from the garden). The lane runs east
to west, so the verge on one side of it is south-facing and gets the
sun, while the verge on the other gets little because it sits in the
shadow of a hedge that runs along that side of the lane. But the
south-facing verge gets very dry, due to its exposure to the sun, and
its hedge "shields" the verge from any rain there might be.

So, which side would be best for poppies?

And what would be the best way of getting them to grow? Would just
scattering the seeds into the grass verge work? Or would I need to
expose patches of soil?

Of course, I'm taking it for granted that poppies could compete with all
the grasses and wild flowers that are currently in the verge.

Poppies are wild flowers of disturbed ground and the seed needs
stratification (frosting over winter) in order to germinate. They will also
have difficulty in competing with established grasses. If it is your verge,
then spray areas in autumn with glyphosate, scarify the bare soil and sow
the seed then. If it is not your land, then wait for a friendly mole to come
along, rake the molehill flat and sow the seed in that.

Phil