The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

Whenever I taste fresh dill in a dip or salad, it brings up memories of my childhood spending time with my Polish grandmother. During the growing season I remember her using dill for a lot of different things. As a result, the lingering scent of fresh dill hung in her kitchen all summer long. For that reason alone dill is one of my favorite herbs.

Another good reason to put it at the top of the list, besides the nostalgia factor,  is how easy it is to grow. In my garden, I have it coming up year after year on its own.

It all started several years ago when I had a bunch of dried dill umbels (tops) hanging up in the open air in a forgotten part of a shed. When I found them they had collected a lot dust and I was in no mood to try to clean them. How would you do that anyway?

So, I crunched them up with my hands  and threw the seed into every corner and edge of the garden. Ever since then, I’ve never had to worry about planting dill. They show up every where. I just have to make sure I leave a few plants to mature and drop seeds.

The normal way to start dill is to sow them in rows at the spacing of about 15 to 20 seeds per foot. It takes about a week to ten days for the seeds to emerge. Once they are up, thin them to about three plants per foot. You will have to keep the weeds down around it, just like the rest of your garden.

I have dill growing in the garlic bed. Once the garlic is gone, I’ll let the dill finish growing.

Keep in mind that dill typically grows to a height of three or four feet so it will shade shorter plants. That’s why I try to restrict my dill to the out of the way places in my garden.

Dill leaves — also called dill weed — can be cut and used anytime during the growing season. For dill pickles, harvest the umbels when the seeds are full size but haven’t turned brown. That’s the secrete for super flavorful dill pickles.

If you can’t use all of your dill right away, air-dry the umbels in the shade. Traditionally, the dried umbels are stored in glass jars but I suppose any air tight container will work. Besides, a glass jar of dill umbels sitting on your kitchen counter is very decorative and lets everyone know you are a real chef.

There is still time to sow dill seed.

Once you have your first crop of dill and remember to leave a few plants in the garden at the end of the season, you won’t have to plant it ever again.

Bob

Last spring, I had a rosemary plant in a six inch pot that over-wintered in the garage.  It looked like it could use a vacation, so, I took it out of its pot and planted it directly into the garden.

While in the garden, it suffered the regular abuse that you expect a rosemary plant to endure.  Whenever I needed rosemary for cooking, I pulled off  leaves. Also, I tore off a few stems to use for starting some new plants from cuttings. It certainly didn’t get coddled during the summer.

Some stems look vigorous while others look stressed on my rosemary.

This fall it survived those nights when the temperatures  dipped down into the teens. Normally, rosemary can’t deal with our harsh winter temperatures. I have in the past, had one or two, by chance,  survive a mild winter.

This week, I finally decided to dig and re-pot this tough little plant. Despite all of the abuse and neglect, the roots grew large enough to fill a 12 inch pot. Also, the dead and damaged stems needed some pruning.  Otherwise, it looks to be in pretty good shape.

I was careful to leave the root-ball intact when digging my rosemary.

The plant grew large enough to need this 12 inch recycled plastic pot.

My plan is to let it rest in our cool, dimly lit garage over winter, just like last year and plant it out in the garden again next spring.

Bob

It has been pretty dry in the garden for the past several days. The plants have begun to show a little drought stess but I’ve been able to keep up with watering.

I took advantage of the dry weather by drying some cilantro. I had some that was started early and needed to be harvested.

There was way too much to use fresh so, on Monday,  I gathered them up in a bunch and set them outside on a wire-top table. The bunch stayed there day and night. Today, Friday, the cilantro was dry and ready to go.

The leaves stay on the stems when drying in bunches like this.

I took  a clean trash bag and slipped it over the bunch.

A new garbage bag works great for collecting cilantro leaves.

By rubbing my hand over the stalks, I was able to easily separate the leaves from the stems. The dried leaves fell into the bag and in five minutes I was done.

Now I have more dried cilantro than I know what to do with.

I compared the price of dried cilantro for sale on Amazon with the amount I managed to gather. Wow! Talk about getting a feeling of satisfaction.

Bob