Dill is a great herb for cooking and garnishing. It goes especially well with meat and fish and it is fairly easy to grow. In this article, I will go over when to plant dill and especially if Dill can be planted in the fall or if you should plant it in the fall. So let´s get started!
In short, Dill can be planted in the Fall. It is actually good to plant Dill seeds in the fall because the seeds sometimes need a little cold period in order to grow properly in Spring. While DIll plants will die from the first real frost the seeds will survive under the soil without any issues.
It is understandable that a lot of new gardeners are not used to plant seeds in Fall because it is the end of the season after all. No new plants will grow this year anymore so why plant new ones?
While this train of thought is absolutely understandable it is also only half right.
Yes, no more plants will grow this season but a lot of seeds actually like a cold period in order to grow and thrive in the spring next year.
And Dill is such a plant.
If you allow your Dill seeds a cold period then they will, most of the time, thrive and grow better next season than they usually would if you plant them in Spring.
That being said. It is still possible to plant Dill seeds in spring and they will most of the time, grow just as well but seeds planted in the fall of last year will start to grow sooner and they will usually be more resistant to environmental influences and, if you believe some veteran gardeners, Dill that was planted in the Fall is supposed to taste better too.
I personally prune my dill year-round until late summer.
At this point, I only prune a few of my DIll plants and let the rest bloom and develop seeds. Then I will finally cut all of my dill plants down before the first frost except for the ones that I let bloom.
The Dill plants that I allowed to develop seeds will drop them at which point I usually go around and simply push them in the soil. I always try to keep them at a distance of around 12 to 15 inches to allow the new Dill plants enough space to grow.
And then I simply let the Dill plants die in the first frost.
Then next year in Spring the new Dill plants will grow and I simply repeat the process.
I haven’t bought new DIll plants in 3 Years!
