Adding Dill to your Home Vegetable Garden

Visit any website that features food recipes, do a search on dill and literally hundreds, if not thousands, depending on the website you visit, of recipes will appear for this great tasting herbs. The first one that comes to mind is dill pickles, but sprinkling dill in with some olive oil over top of some potatoes is a quick and tasty dish as well. Here is how you add dill to your home vegetable garden.

You can start dill seeds indoors before moving them outdoors; however they do not transplant well. Therefore simply wait until the potential for frost has passed in your area. The best way to plant dill seeds is to sprinkle some in the area where you want them to grow, cover slightly with soil and give them a moderate watering.

Dill grows best in soil that is a bit more acidic. A pH range for your soil in the area where you will be growing dill should be in the 5.5 to 6.5 range. If you are unsure of what the pH range of your soil is, purchase a home soil testing kit from any home or garden center. They cost only a couple of dollars. Follow the instructions on the kit to adjust your soil’s pH level to get it in the range noted above.

Dill likes full sun and moderate watering and high amounts of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, so make sure you keep at least a one inch level of good quality compost at the base of your dill.

When the plant gets to the size of your liking it is ready to be harvested. Then simply harvest as you need. Dill also grows best when you simply leave it alone to do its own thing and only bothered when you harvest. So keep that in mind when you weed around your dill plants.

Besides being a great herb to add to your food dishes, adding dill to your home vegetable garden also has benefits to your gardening ecosystem. Dill attracts a variety of beneficial insects that go after insects that would normally do harm to your garden. So even if you do not consume dill, you should consider adding it to your garden.

If you, like me, follow a crop rotation in your garden, make sure your dill follows your beets and avoid following carrots or plants in the carrot family (such as parsnips). On a side note, dill makes for a good companion to plants in the cabbage family.

As you can see dill is easy to grow once you get the basics down. Simply follow the information above and you will be well on your way to growing great dill.

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the Rest of Us, available where gardening books are sold. You can follow Mike on Twitter at : http://twitter.com/mikethegardener or on his website at: AveragePersonGardening.com.