Lessons learned! Welcome to gardening. You may have to start over with the poppies unless you want a mess of scraggly plants fighting for nutrients, space, air, water, sun, etc.

Even the most experienced gardeners are always learning. Do a lot of reading on gardening basics this winter.

Educate yourself and have fun with it.

PS: IF the poppies are annuals, you could let them fight it out and see what happens, pulling the plants you don't want, as they grow, and throwing them on the compost. In any case, chalk it up to a gardener's mistake. (I allow myself one stupid mistake a day, like pulling up a perennial I thought was a weed, and I've been at this for 35 years.) So go easy on yourself.

If the poppies are perennials, then scrape them all up because perennial poppies are forever once they get their taproot down!

This post was edited by susanzone5 on Thu, Feb 6, 14 at 16:53

Yes there are certain plants that it is better to direct sew these are cucurbits (Pumpkins, melons, watermelon, gourds, squash, and cucumbers,) Corn, Beans, carrots, and spinach. Most others you might want to start inside. Although I plant half a row worth of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, and celery inside and direct sew the other half I direct sew, so I'll have a spread out crop after harvesting I plant more.
Now about making mistakes, my friends always wonder how I'm so good at gardening, I always tell them I make mistakes. I've been gardening for 4 years now making mistakes. I agree with susanzone5 you may want to restart.

"am I going to have to be out there, down on my knees in the spring plucking up 200 seedlings?"

If you are going to be a gardener, then you are going to be out there on your knees an awful lot of the time anyway. With little experience, and Chicago weather, there is no telling what you will have in spring, could be they won't come up at all, could be you will have to thin them out. Half the fun of it all is finding out what works. - Good luck with it!

Since you pulled all the mulch up you could either lay newspaper or cardboard on the ground then place your mulch on top of it. This should hinder almost anything from coming up. You could also do the same after you see germination and just leave spaces in the cardboard and mulch for the plants you want.

I grow lots of poppies and for them to do well they need to be thinned as they tend to not like competition. Do you know what poppies you sowed?

Thanks for the advice! They were annual poppies- shirley poppies I think?

Those are a great variety. I guess I should have been more clear above when I stated they don't like competition and should be thinned. This is only if you want them to get to maximum height and flower size. If they are planted en mass, not thinned and left to fight for themselves they will be considerably smaller in both height and flower size, yet still have a dramatic effect.

Good luck with them :)

SCG

Thank you so much SCG! That is exactly what I was hoping! :)