Days to Maturity: 55
Dill combines the two flavors and smells of parsley and caraway into one herb and looks great while doing it. The cooling, aromatic foliage and seeds are used in a wide range of dishes, especially those with eggs, potatoes, fish, and pickling cucumbers. This lovely variety, Bouquet, is grown from certified organic seed and offers larger flowerheads and darker green foliage than the species, for even more delectable harvests.
For a regular supply of dill leaves, make successive sowings every 2 to 3 weeks in well-drained, neutral to slightly acid soil in full sun. Dill does not like to be transplanted, so direct sow it when the soil warms up in spring or even early summer. (It grows quickly.) Do not plant near carrots, as they react adversely, or too close to fennel, with which it will exchange flavor profiles. However, cabbage and onions, among many others, love to grow near dill.
Dill flowers also attract beneficial insects that prey on aphids. Beautiful flat-topped yellow blooms add beauty to the herb garden, vegetable patch, and even the annual flower garden. Pinch off the flower buds if you are growing dill for its foliage (dill weed); the flavor will be most intense before the plant blooms. But if you want to harvest the seeds too, let the plants bloom and dry out, placing a paper bag over the flowerheads in fall to collect the seeds. And you may want to leave a few plants uncovered; dill will readily self-sow if the seeds are allowed to fall and left undisturbed over winter.
Expect Bouquet to reach about 36 inches tall and 12 inches wide. Enjoy this wonderful and very useful herb in your sunny garden.
