The right time to harvest dill
When it comes to harvesting dill, a distinction must be made between harvesting the tips of the dill and harvesting dill seeds for kitchen purposes or re-sowing. Depending on the time of sowing, young dill tips can sometimes be harvested from the herb pot or cultivated outdoors as early as May. Individual dill tips can be cut into pieces of around 15 to 20 centimeters or even whole plants for processing or storage until September.
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- Pull the dill in the pot and harvest it for the kitchen
- Grow and harvest dill yourself on the balcony
- Store dill properly after harvest
Harvest dill seeds for use as a condiment
If you want to harvest the seeds of the dill for use as a spice, they must be sown outdoors by the end of June at the latest. Then the brown seeds of the initially yellow flower umbels can ripen by autumn. For easy harvesting and processing of dill seeds, it has proven useful to cut off the entire flower umbels when they are fully ripe and to bundle them into small bunches. Hang the dill bunches upside down in a well-ventilated place and put clean paper bags over the flower umbels from below. The seeds fall into the paper bags as they dry out and can be easily filled for further storage.
Harvest and use dill tips
When growing dill in smaller pots, the plants can grow rather weakly, as they actually have relatively deep roots. Nevertheless, the amount grown in the pot is often enough to use cut dill tips for the following foods:
- for a brew for pickling pickles
- as part of salads
- as a seasoning for fish dishes
- for dill potatoes as a traditional side dish
The storage of harvested dill
If you harvest the shoot tips of healthy dill plants correctly in a balanced ratio, you can cut and process fresh dill several times if the site conditions are good. If you have particularly vigorously growing dill plants or want to create a winter supply, the question of the correct storage of dill arises. The best method of storing dill seeds is by drying them gently and storing them in a dry, well-ventilated place. Dill tips, on the other hand, are preferably frozen for better aroma retention. Freshly harvested dill retains its aroma for up to three weeks when stored in the refrigerator.
Tips & Tricks
If you want to self-sow dill in your garden, you should leave a few flower umbels with seeds when harvesting. The chances are then usually good that the dill will look for a new ideal location as a crop rotation plant close to the old location.
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