Home Garden Joy

Gardening, cooking, and (almost) vegetarian living with writer Jeanne Grunert

Dill, an Easy to Grow Garden Herb

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Dill is an easy to grow garden herb that can be used fresh, used in pickle recipes, and dried for later use. I love to grow it for my spice rack but also to feed swallowtail butterflies, whose caterpillars love it, too!
Dill

Dill is one of the easiest to grow garden herbs, but it can rapidly overtake your garden by reseeding itself. I have on corner of the carrot patch that nurtured a few dill plants several years ago. Thanks to the magic of reseeding, I haven’t planted dill in years – it comes up from seeds, descendants of the original plants. 
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However, if you want to grow dill in the home garden, it’s pretty simple. Dill needs full sun, six to eight hours a day, and slightly acidic, well-drained soil. Sounds familiar? That’s because it’s pretty much the same requirements as carrots, which was yesterday’s “C” featured edible on the blogging A to Z challenge. That’s why my dill plants flourish next to the carrots – they both love the same thing!

 

swallowtail butterfly caterpillar

He (or she?) likes dill, too. Butterfly caterpillar on dill.

Dill hates to be transplanted, so be sure to sow the seeds directly into the area where you wish to grow it. You don’t have to spring for expensive seeds, either – the inexpensive packs work just as well as the expensive ones when it comes to dill.
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Sow seeds directly into prepared soil approximately 1/2 inches in the ground and a foot or so apart. If that seems like a big distance, remember that dill gets very tall. The plants need room to spread out. And a few plants are sufficient, unless you really, really love dill pickles and fresh dill sprinkled on salmon. If you want to make dill pickles, you may need more. Sow the seeds after the last danger of frost has passed, or else frost may kill the tender seedlings.
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That’s it. Like most herbs, dill doesn’t require fertilizer. Pick the fronds and heads from the dill and air dry them or use a dehydrator to dry them. The seeds can also be dried and used in cooking.

dilled green beans

Dilly green beans are a delicious canned salad of green beans, peppers, garlic and dill.

A little dill goes a long way, but fresh herbs add such a sparkle to most dishes, and herbs are generally so easy to grow that adding dill to the kitchen garden is always a good idea.
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Writer, gardener, compassionate lifestyle advocate. If you can't be brilliant, odd will do.

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