Bouquet Dill

An Intro to Dill

MY STATUS: Grown Successfully to Harvest 

Dill is a member of the carrot family, native to the Mid-East. It's an annual in temperate climates, but may have quite a long life-span in Pohnpei's invariably warm climate.

WELL-DRAINED, SIMPLE SOILS

Like many herbs, dill does well in loose, well-drained soils with low fertility. It doesn't need to be fertilized much, if ever, and over-fertilizing can actually weaken the flavor.

CONTAINER-HAPPY / DIRECT SEED

Dill isn't adversely affected by crowding. It does well in containers, but it has a fairly substantial tap-root, so the pots need to be deep. Plants will support each others' rather flimsy stalks if grown close together. It can grow as tall as 4 feet. Like cilantro, it doesn't like to be transplanted, so it should be sowed in its final resting place.

WATERING HABITS

Keep dill out of the rain. Water it as you would other Mediterranean herbs--deeply, but let the soil go completely dry to a depth of at least 4 inches before watering again.

FULL SUN

Dill prefers full sun, but will tolerate partial shade.

PINCH, PINCH

Regularly pinch off the top buds of the plants. This will make them bushier rather than tall and leggy.

PESTS BE GONE

Dill is not very prone to pests or diseases. The main enemy of the plant--caterpillars of the swallowtail butterfly--don't live on Pohnpei.

HARVESTING

The plant is grown both for its leaves and for its seeds. Leaves can usually be harvested within a month and seeds after two months.

CROSS-POLLINATION ALERT

Dill will cross-pollinate with other plants from the same family, like fennel and coriander (cilantro), ruining its taste (and that of the other plant involved), so keep it well away from your cilantro and fennel.

What I Did

DAY 1 - SOWING

Honestly, I've never used dill in cooking before and I wouldn't know how to use it, but I seriously want to try making my own pickles here on Pohnpei. Not sure where I'll find cucumbers small enough. Perhaps I'll be making some giant pickles. Anyway, that's my motivation for this plant: a big jar of juicy, sour pickle-goodness. :)

It is widely recommended that dill be sown directly in the ground or in the container where you plan to grow it, rather than in seed trays or cups. I prepared a medium pot with some gravel in the bottom and a moist mixture of 90% potting soil and 10% fine basalt sand. Seeds were sown in 1/4 inch deep holes a few inches apart. I used Ferry-Morse StartSmart seeds purchased at Home Depot in Southern California. Seeds were refrigerated for 3 months prior to sowing.

DAY 6 - GERMINATION

A number of the seeds have sprouted. They look very similar to cilantro seedlings.

DAY 16 - TRUE LEAVES

I thinned out the seedlings so they are all at least an inch or so from each other. I'll be attempting to transplant them fairly soon, even though transplantation isn't the best way to do things. At the time I seeded, I just didn't have the right containers. We'll see if I can make it work. All seedlings are now about 2 inches tall and have at least one true leaf (some have two). The leaves look very similar to the ones developing on the fennel, which I keep quite some distance from where the dill is.

DAY 22 - TRANSPLANTATION

As I pointed out earlier, you shouldn't actually be doing the whole transplantation bit, but I was lazy and didn't get the pots I truly needed right at the start. So I did the transplant this afternoon. I used a big spoon and dug it down really deep, taking a huge chunk of soil with one seedling in it to avoid disturbing the roots any more than necessary. The big chunks were planted right in the soil in the new pots. We'll see if they pull through. If not, I'll do what everyone on earth suggested and re-sow.

DAY 36

Despite what everyone said would happen, the dill tolerated the transplantation well and is thriving.

DAY 73 - SLOW GROWTH

After a strong start, the dill is still looking pretty much the same as my last entry more than a month ago. It hasn't gained any height or thickened much. It continues to produce new leaves, but these usually turn purplish and then brown within a week or so. My guess is that I've over-watered somewhat, so my current tactic is to let the pot dry out more and see if this has a positive effect. It was my understanding that dill and fennel thrive in similar conditions, but if this is true, something else is wrong; my fennel is grown in a different spot, but has gotten just as much sun and water as the dill and it is growing like a weed. It's possible that slight differences in soil composition could be the cause. We'll see if drier soil helps.

DAY 80 - TERMINATION

These guys weren't doing anything other than turning reddish and wilting. More water, less water, more sun, less sun. Nothing seemed to help.

ATTEMPT 3 / DAY 1 (12/23) - SOWING

Since I'm leaving Pohnpei in a couple of months, I decided to make one last try with the dill. This is my third attempt to get this plant to thrive. Seeds germinated quickly on the first two runs, but the plants never really achieved any size. They stayed in the seedling stage before finally withering. This time I'm going to try giving the plants more shade.