I've never had much luck either. I think I let it dry out too much or drown it. Hopefully someone will have an answer we can both use! :-)

I only ever direct seed my own dill. I have always had success this way!

GGG

I just bought a 8 inch Dill plant from Autumn Hill nursery yesterday and put it in the ground. I'll let you know what happens!

Dill is the herbal bane of my existence. Every year, I put in a couple of plants and watch them die. Last year I tried seeds to no avail. I'm going to try seeds again this summer. My garden is pretty small, and the herb garden is only about 8x8. There's not a lot of room for a big, fluffy stand of dill, but I have to fit one in somewhere!

OK, People. I know when I'm beat, so I called the county extension agent. He is sending me a two-page brochure from UGA about growing dill in GA. I will share it with you when I get it. One thing he did say is that according to UGA dill is very very very hard to transplant, but very easy to start from seed. I'll share the rest of the info when it arrives. I'm off to the nursery to see if they still have dill seed. Summer is here and it's time to start grilling burgers again.

I'm no cook, but here is my favorite burger. Mix a little minced dill, lemon zest, salt & pepper, and Lea & Perrins into the burgers before you make the patties & grill them. Hmmmmm!!! While you have the grill going, slice some crookneck squash, rub on a little olive oil, and grill it. Use the juice from the lemon to make a vinagrette and throw some minced fresh oregano into it. It's great poured over the grilled squash.

Also note that dill is a short term annual in our climate. Think of umbel herbs: cilantro, dill - they like cooler weather than we can usually afford. So having dill all summer is a wish and a hope, just like making fresh pesto is in Atlanta. Parsley is always done for when the basil comes along!
Your best option is to grow dill in a part-sun bed with excellent soil. Let it grow and harvest leaves. Freeze them in icecube containers and enjoy them thawed with your burgers in July.
Also try different varieties of dill. This year I happened to have great success in the drier soil. When we have a wet spring it is even harder to grow!

Good luck!

GGG

GGG is right. I grew Dill last year (transplant from a nursery) in a morning sun only (5 hours), composted raised bed . It lasted about 1 month before it bolted, which is "herb-speak" for sending up flowers and dying. Our summers are just too hot for Dill.

I have good luck with parsley, ggg, by growing it in the same amount of shade I have in my woodland garden - it gets through its first summer without bolting and revives in the fall. I can usually harvest it through the winter, then replace it in early spring. Try some in a shadier spot and see if you can get basil and parsley together. I love fresh pesto.

If it gets too hot here in the summer, would we have better luck planting it earlier? I imagine it would still die off at the same time, but at least I could get a bigger ice cube harvest out of it.

Dill reseeds freely. I see new plants sprouting up all over the place in the winter and very early spring. Right now I have a couple dozen young sprouts all over my flower beds. Some are as tall as a foot, some just 2-3 inches. I don't consider them invasive because they have beautiful foliage and disappear when everything else has gotten some size to themselves. After they flower, they will disappear suddenly. Accept their life cycle, they won't adapt to ours.

Linda Gail

Drat. I had read somewhere that dill would flower in the heat, but that it would keep on going anyway. I had already started some from seed, but I guess it's too late.

Should have checked this forum first!

lindagial, for dill to reseed it has to live long enough to flower. LOL - my dill does disappear suddenly - it's just long before any flowers.

I too can get my parsley through the summer as sugarhill describes, but we are both north of the city and that few degrees of coolness could make the difference. I ahve not had any lick with dill either, and I have only tried from seed. I didn't even try this year.

I have parsley in a shady spot and it's survived for a few years. I manage to get some of it in between it getting eaten by eastern swallowtail catepillars. I have two on it right now.

My dill gets eaten by rabbits before I get it planted in a garden. Cilantro is their second favorite.

You can grow cilantro here? I didn't know that. It's my second favorite herb too.

Here's another dill question. Could you grow it inside with grow lights? Seems to me air conditioning would give it just the temperature it wants.

I'll call it...Time of Death...8:17am. It lasted 21 days. Cause of death appears to be accidental drowning.

I accept defeat. Dill no more.

I got the dill brochure from the county extension agent. It recommends sowing seed as soon as all danger of spring frost has passed (that would be after mid-April here) and resowing every two to three weeks through mid-summer. The instructions come from the University of Minnesotta. How useful would they be in our climate? Could you really sow dill here in midsummer and expect anything? It also says dill needs 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight or can be grown indoors under 12 hours of flourescent light. ggg, I think you need to write the extension agency brochure for dill. You seem to be the only one having success.

Well, I sowed my dill after all danger of spring frost (about the last week of April this year). Too bad the high temps immediately reached 85 degrees!

The dill has sprouted and is growing nicely. Poor little sprouts don't know their days are numbered. I won't bother trying to transplant them, but it will be interesting to see how long they last.

I live in a colder climate than most of you and I can say that it thrives up here and the cooler temps probably have something to do with it. I usually buy a couple plants in late May and set them out in a sunny bed and they provide dill through the summer and early fall. Some grow to nearly 3 ft in height. To prevent bolting I snip off the flowers when the bud forms. Occasionally, some years the dill will self seed.

jackz411, I think it's an understatement to say you live in a colder climate than ours!!! You're probably right that the cooler temperatures have a lot to do with it. Maybe you can harvest some of that dill and send it down to us?