So, we are trying something new with the timing of our dill this season.
In most years, we’ve sowed dill quite early in the season. Typically 4-6 weeks to last frost, like you would with most herbs. We’ve never really been happy with this timing since the bulk of our cucumbers and pickling needs come in well after the dill has been flowering.
So, this year, we went fairly extreme in the “other” direction and decided to direct sow our dill. This herb definitely takes a couple weeks to germinate and go through the seedling stage. But, once it gets a little bit of foliage, it takes off super fast.
The general goal with this change is to make sure we have plenty of tasty dill fronds when we’re doing our pickling efforts. While you can use the flowers and the results are similar from a pickling perspective, we’d prefer using the pre-flowering dill fonds for most of our pickling.
This change should really help with things like dilly beans, which are typically a later season thing we put up. By late season, our dill are usually looking quite long in the tooth.
It’ll be interesting to see how this timing works for the bulk of our pickling needs. We think it’ll work much better for our needs. We may shift it further in future seasons, depending on how everything comes together.
Some folks may not realize that you can fully customize sowing times for your particular needs. While those seed sowing schedules are certainly good guidance, they shouldn’t be read into like they are the gospel of growing things! If you think a change would suit your situation better, give it a shot!
We are really looking forward to pickling season! It’s coming upon us faster than we’d like, but we’re excited to get some fresh pickles going soon! We’ll definitely talk more about pickling soon!
