July 7, 2014
While pulling a
few weeds out of my herb garden this weekend, I noticed that my dill plant has
produced the most beautiful “heads” I have seen anywhere. As with most things that grow in the garden,
I just love dill. It’s a beautiful
plant. It is tall and graceful…two
things that I always longed to be. (I
got the tall part, but I’m a little short on graceful these days. Then again, getting 50% of what you want is
not really such a bad deal.) The dill
plant somewhat resembles Queen Anne’s Lace with its lacy broad flower heads.
In addition to
dill being lovely to look at, it also has some other functional uses. As you probably know, dill is used to make
the dill pickles which taste so good with hamburgers. Some people, me included, put the flower
heads into the jar with the cucumbers prior to canning then. A jar of pickles with the dill flower placed
just perfectly in the jar looks ever so lovely sitting on a shelf or a picnic
table.
Another way I use
dill is to plant it next to my zucchini squash.
This is supposed to help keep the dreaded Squash Vine Borer at bay. Almost any gardener will tell you of the heartbreak
they feel when one day they have perfectly lovely squash plants and then they
enter their garden one morning to find the squash plants have collapsed during
the night…that’s the work of the Squash Vine Borer. (By the way, it also helps to plant your
squash plants later in the season to help deter those little buggers…I presume
that the reason planting them later in the season helps is because they’re too
busy munching on your neighbors’ full-grown plants to bother with yours.) I can say that…so far…this combination has
worked well for me, although my two squash plants do look a bit out of place growing
in my herb garden. However, I’m a firm
believer in the “whatever works” method of gardening.
If you are
growing dill in your garden or a container, you can save the seeds for next
year by cutting a few of the flower stalks and tying them together. I hang them in my outside shed in an area
that doesn’t get direct light. You can
tie a paper bag around the flower heads (with holes punched in the sides of the
bag) to catch the seeds. Sometimes I get
lazy, though, and just drop the flower heads onto a plate and set it on a
bookcase in Charming’s office. Both of
these seed saving methods have worked for me.
Be sure the seeds are completely dry, though, before storing them in an
airtight container…such as a small glass jar.
In my herb
garden, dill will sometimes “self seed”.
If I get really, really lazy and don’t collect the flower heads for seed
saving during the summer then, in the fall, the seeds will dry and drop to the
ground where they will germinate the following spring. Trouble is…they might end up one to ten feet
from where you had your original plants.
So, if you decide to let your dill self-seed, you need to be on the look
out for it in the spring. You definitely
don’t want to till it under or accidentally pull it up when you’re preparing next
year’s herb garden.
 |
| Dill flowers. A true work of art by nature... |
 |
| ...that gets transformed into another work of art by human hands... |
 |
| ...and a little reminder to myself of where these works of art come from. |
 |
A bonus picture of my sweet boy doing what he loves most...
chasing and catching the water from the garden hose! (He's actually
in mid-air as he catches the blast from the hose.) |
No comments:
Post a Comment