I'm here in our overwinter tunnel planting, and I'm in front of our Icelandic poppy planting. Icelandic poppies (Papaver nudicaule) is a crop that has done really well for us in the overwinter tunnel for the past few years.

We planted these in mid-October, and we started harvesting off of them in the middle of April, which is typical when we start getting the first few stems off of them. And we're headed into Mother's Day weekend, right now, with these, in the middle of May. And you can see that there are still a lot of nice stems on these plants that could be harvested.

Vigor & Resilience

A few of the things that are really nice about this crop in an overwintered planting are the vigor and resilience. These plants hold up really well during the cooler temperatures that we experience through the winter. And they actually seem to really thrive and put on a lot of growth in late winter going into the spring. And what that results in is a plant that is a little bigger and more vigorous and a little bit stronger, going into the spring, compared to a spring-planted or late winter-planted poppy.

If we plant into the tunnel in the late winter, those plants just don't seem to have enough time to put on bulk and vegetative growth, compared to the overwinter planting. So again, because of the longer window of time to grow vegetatively in the tunnel, these plants seem to be able to put out really nice, long, tall stems.

Long Harvest Window

They have a long harvest window, too. We will be harvesting off of these through the end of May. And we typically stop harvesting just when it gets too hot in here for these plants, and the plants start to decline.

So again, these are Icelandic poppies in the overwinter tunnel. Some of the benefits of planting them in this slot for us are the nice, vigorous plants that develop in this planting slot; the long, strong stems; the early harvest dates — one of the earliest crops to bloom for us in the overwinter tunnel; and the really long harvest window.