Learn how to plant, grow, and harvest dill with The Old Farmer’s Almanac’s plant guide.
Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Dill
With its feathery green leaves, fragrant dill is commonly used in pickling, soups, dressings, and potato dishes. As its name suggests, dill “weed” is easy to grow! It’s also a great companion plant to deter pests. Here’s how to plant, grow, and harvest dill.
About Dill
Native to Eurasia and the Mediterranean, dill is most at home in warmer climates. It’s an annual herb, so to create a permanent patch of dill, allow some of the plants to flower and go to seed each year—you’ll have plenty of early dill to start the next growing season.
Dill attracts beneficial insects such as wasps and other predatory insects to your garden and is a host plant for the caterpillar of the black swallowtail butterfly.
Growing
- Water the plants freely during the growing season, ensuring that they don’t dry out excessively.
- In order to ensure a season-long fresh supply of dill, continue sowing seeds every few weeks. For an extended harvest of the leaves, do not allow flowers to grow on the plants.
- If dill is allowed to go to seed and the soil isn’t disturbed too much, more dill plants will likely appear next spring.
- ‘Fernleaf’ dill is a compact variety that works well in containers and is not prone to bolting.
- ‘Bouquet’ is a larger variety that produces a lot of seeds.
- ‘Mammoth’ is another tall variety and is considered one of the best for pickling and other culinary uses, such as in potato salads, cucumber soup, and fish dishes.
Cooking Notes
Many people love to make dill pickles with their fresh dill. Learn how with our video on making dill pickles. You can also add dill as a seasoning in countless recipes.
Catherine Boeckmann
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Yeah it's sounds like a slow death, dehydrating whilst stuck to a piece of tape. Just buy lady birds I would suggest.
That would not be a slow death. You can very easily fold the tape in half and step on it after you are done collecting the bugs and poof, instant death. They are bugs, I don't know why you would be worried about them having a slow death anyway.
Lol! Now that's funny! And practical, too. I don't know why anyone would be concerned about the feelings of insects. Hundreds of billions of insects die every day- that's just an essential part of the cycle of life. Plus, many insects, given half the chance, would gladly decimate our crops, starve us to death, then feast on our corpses. There's good bugs and there's bad bugs.
I have have attempted to start dill from seeds for the last 2 years, sowing directly into the ground, plenty of sun and water, bought seed in a packet one year then used seed harvested from another gardener last year. I could not get my seed to sprout, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, great article!
I purchased a miracle aero system with dill. Works great.
We are inclined to think the problem is in the soil. Dill will grow in poor soil; but if you have not already, you could try well-drained/draining composted soil, and full sun. There seems to be enthusiasts of both camps (poor soil, composted soil). It does not do well when over watered or in rainy season. One other thought, going back to the soil: What is the pH of your soil? Dill likes a neutral pH of between 5.5 and 6.5. An extreme acid or alkaline soil could be the issue here, if all else is as it should be.
We hope this helps!
I bought dillweed at the farmers market to make dill pickles. It had a lot of aphids on it we washed it in salt and vintages but we're still seeing them. How do you get them off of harvested dill weed?
The aphids are sticky so you need a vinegar rinse to release them. Add a cup of white vinegar to a bowl of cold water and wash the dill in the water. Then rinse a few times in vinegar-free water. If it’s still too heavily invested, talk to the place where you got them. Also, for what it’s worth, eating an aphid is harmless protein, but we understand that you wouldn’t want to eat bugs!
Hi there,
I'm trying to establish a solid dill patch that will reseed itself year after year. (I know it can be done in my climate because a relative of mine has a beautiful and dense patch that comes back on its own every year.) I had a couple plants that were flowering, but the flowers were all just destroyed by hail. I was thinking about scattering some dill seeds from a packet in the vicinity of the plants around the time that the seeds would have been falling themselves, in an effort to simulate the self-seeding process. Is there a time in the late summer/autumn when it would be best to do something like that?
The ideal time to sow dill seeds directly into the ground is late April through May. But given the fact that several crops can be harvested during the summer and fall by planting seeds every 2-3 weeks through midsummer, you might want to start a batch now.
