Welcome to this post about growing dill and whether it can take over your garden at home. Dill is fortunately a culinary herb that does not spread a whole lot. Although it can produce plenty of seeds at the end of the season. They can have a hard time establishing themselves in new places.
Since it only lives for two years we want to make the most of those years. In this article we will talk a bit about the conditions that dill likes and how you can collect the seeds and eventually grow new seedlings for the next year.
If you want to learn more about growing dill and the continuation of the dill line you have at home then you can read one of our articles. Find it here, Does Dill Come Back Every Year.
Does Dill Take Over The Garden
We talked about in the beginning of this article, dill is not really a herb that can spread easily in your garden. Much of this is because it’s very vulnerable in the early stages of its life. But by the end it will have developed woody stems that are hard to succumb to any weather.
This is very good because we don’t have to worry about cutting the flowers to limit the seed development. Instead we might even want to have them come forth as they both are delicious in cooking but fantastic to use for growing new dill the next year.
If you have read a lot of the articles here on the site then you would know that dill really likes a space where the sun can reach it. You should aim for it to get about 6 – 8 hours of light everyday to keep it on track with growth. Looking after the soil is also very important. This includes making sure it never really dries out completely. Dill likes when the soil is kept damp or wet. Having these two things covered will make sure that your dill can thrive for the full year and come back strong the next year too.
What Does Dill Do For The Garden?
Dill does a lot of good things for where it’s growing in the garden. The first one is that it introduces more nutrition to the soil which will benefit the plants growing close by it. Another thing it does is attract more beneficial insects to the garden. Most of the insects are predatory ones like wasps. But on top of this it also provides a hosting place for caterpillars to mature on, more particularly on the dill flowers.
When it comes to collecting the seeds that the plant will produce, it’s fairly straightforward. It comes down to keeping it healthy throughout the season and not cutting off or picking any of the flowers. They will hopefully be pollinated and therefore develop seeds. Once the flowers are starting to wilt then the seeds will come forth and you can start seeing them. You will want to pick the entire stems of the dill with the seeds and all. But don’t do this before the seeds have turned brown and are dry.
Then you can pick them and hang upside down to let the seeds fall off once they are ready. We recommend keeping something beneath and drying the stems indoors where you have space. You can use them both in the kitchen or for growing seedlings for the coming season. The fresher the seeds are, the better they will grow. This goes across the board for any plant really. In the kitchen we recommend using them with anything seafood. Especially crayfish, that’s a proper delicacy.
I want to reiterate again on what we have been talking about. Dill is a herb that can produce a lot of seeds during the season but they won’t really travel around your garden and establish themselves. So dill wont take over your garden.
If you want to learn more about how dill will come back for the next year then have written an article just about that. You can find it here, Will Dill Keep Coming Back.
