Phew! Many requests for double purple poppy seeds came through the mail since my Aug. 2-3 column offering a sampling of seed from my generous neighbor, Constance. So many, in fact, that I had to sheepishly call Constance, Queen of Poppies herself, and inquire about the availability of an additional supply. She came to our rescue, thank heavens, delivering to my doorstep a container full of the itty-bitty black seeds.

If for some reason you requested the seeds but haven’t received them, it’s possible that you didn’t include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Do try again! I’ll continue to send out seed with instructions on how to grow them as long as the supply lasts.

I really enjoyed reading your wonderful letters. With them came some excellent gardening questions. I’ll answer two questions about perennial flowers in this column and will attend to others in future columns. If you have questions about your garden plants or would like to suggest a topic for a future column write to the address below.

Q: If you haven’t recently had a question about delphinium care, I would appreciate some help. I have no luck getting them to winter over. Do you have any helpful hints? – Katherine

A: Ironically, two Surry and Sebec readers reported in their recent letters that this was a dazzling delphinium year in their gardens. Unfortunately, delphiniums can be a bit fussy, and there may really be no formula for assured success with the towering perennials from garden to garden.

Delphiniums can be fussy, I say, but still, they are one of those old-fashioned flowers one may see in old, overgrown landscapes where few other plants remain. It comes down to this: once you can establish a delphinium, you most likely will enjoy it for years to come.

Growing healthy plants is the first step in successfully overwintering them.

Delphiniums enjoy full sun and moist, well-drained soil. They tend to “feed” heavily, meaning they require a soil that is well-fertilized and which has the ability to hold nutrients well and over an extended period of time. Amending loamy soil with compost or composted manure is recommended. Avoiding any hot, dry, sandy soil is also advisable.

Where delphiniums are concerned, one adversity of Maine’s soils is that most tend toward to be acidic. Delphiniums prefer an alkaline, or basic, pH. To adjust the pH of an acidic soil, amend with wood ash, lime or a liming agent. If you are uncertain about the level of acidity or alkalinity of your soil, contact your local Cooperative Extension office for a soil-testing kit and instructions on how to conduct a soil test and obtain its results.

As for overwintering tips, one suggestion is to plant the perennial near the protection of a building. Specifically, plant delphiniums on the south or southeastern side of your home or an outbuilding.

If it is not possible to site the plant in this manner, try protecting the plant through winter mulching. This can be a sensitive strategy that requires the gardener’s best attention. The idea behind mulching perennials for the winter is to prevent them from experiencing repeated thawing and freezing during fluctuating winter temperatures. An effective mulch equalizes variable winter temperatures and prevents dormant plants from dislodging from the garden soil and rotting.

After a killing frost, remove the dead delphinium leaves and stems. When the ground is thoroughly frozen but before a significant snowfall has occurred, mulch with a heavy layer of dry leaf litter or fir boughs. Remove mulch in early spring before the ground has thawed, but after the threat of repeated heavy freezes has passed.

Q: For the first time this year, my peonies have matured seeds. I have one plant that produced pods of yellow seeds, and another with brilliant red seeds. How do I go about using these seeds to start new plants? – Deborah

A: It can take up to seven years to produce a flowering peony from seed. For this reason, it is much more common to propagate the flowering plants from division in early spring, or – more commonly – in late summer.

Technically speaking, it is possible to grow peonies from seed, but it is not easy. A complicated physiological process occurs during the germination of peony seeds, which can make it difficult to reliably produce new plants from seed. It may take seeds one or two years to undergo the germination process, known as epicotyl dormancy.

Seeds are sown in a cold frame in late autumn. They undergo stratification – or a prolonged cold treatment – during the first winter. Over the course of the next spring and summer, the seed develops roots. Shoots develop the following spring. Maturing plants can be set out into the garden when they have several sets of fully developed true leaves.

To complicate things, many of the peonies growing in today’s gardens are hybridized plants, and will not be “true to type” when grown from seed. Here’s how this happens: hybridized plants are the result of two specific parents being crossed or bred for a particular flower color and form. When these plants flower, they may be pollinated from any number of peonies growing in the garden. The seeds that are produced by the plant may contain an entirely different host of genetic information and may reflect very different traits when grown to flower from seed.

In short, the seed from a hybrid peony you save and successfully grow through the painstaking germination process may not produce the same flower and form you expect from the parent plant.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.