Should You Let Your Dill Flower?
If you’re growing dill in your garden, you may be wondering if you should let it bloom. Join farmer Briana Yablonski to learn if you should let dill flower.
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When you think of dill, you may imagine feathery green foliage or large umbels made up of tiny yellow flowers. Both of these parts of the plant are useful in the garden and kitchen, and a single plant can produce both in the same growing season.
You may hope to enjoy the leaves in sauces and dips, or use the flowers in bouquets. Or maybe you want to do a little bit of both.
With this in mind, there’s no one correct answer to whether or not you should let your dill flower. I’ll cover the benefits and drawbacks of letting your dill bloom so you can decide whether or not you want to let it flower.
Does All Dill Produce Flowers?
Yes, all dill will produce flowers when given the right conditions and enough time. It doesn’t matter if the variety is marketed for its greens or flowers, although there are some differences between varieties.
Some dill varieties were bred for their fragrant foliage and tendency to be slow to bolt. These cultivars are often grown by vegetable farmers and gardeners who want to enjoy the herbs’ feathery foliage. While they’re rarely planted with flowers as the primary goal, they will produce blooms if left in the ground long enough.
Other cultivars are bred mainly for foliage as well as their flowers. These varieties will also produce feathery leaves and bright flowers, but they will produce flowers more quickly than slow-bolt varieties.
Reasons to Let Your Dill Flower
So, should you let your dill flower? It depends on your goals for the plant and your overall garden. Here are some benefits of allowing this annual herb to bloom.
Enjoy Seed Production
If you want to save seed from your dill plants, the first step is to let the plants flower. The flowers will emerge as a large umbel of small yellow blooms, and eventually, each flower will turn into a seed.
The time from sowing the seed to harvesting mature seed differs by variety, but most will produce seeds within 80 to 100 days after sowing. Once you see the flowers emerge, leave them on the plant until they form seeds and turn brown.
Harvest Cut Flowers
Dill flowers add a bright yet airy appearance to bouquets. Since each flower head is composed of dozens of individual flowers, they mix well with larger focal flowers and spikes.
If you hope to grow dill for flowers, it’s a good idea to provide support that encourages long, straight stems. Corralling the plants with a box of stakes and twine will suffice, but you can also place a layer of horizontal netting about the plants to support them as they grow.
Wait until each individual flower is just starting to open before you cut the blooms. Harvesting at this stage will yield sturdy stems that hold up well in a vase.
Attract Beneficial Insects
When you let your dill flower, the tiny blooms do more than add beauty to the garden; they also provide valuable nectar and pollen for a host of beneficial insects. These include predatory insects that feed on common pests like aphids, thrips, and stink bugs. Hoveflies, parasitic wasps, and green lacewings are just a few of the natural predators that visit dill flowers.
Dill is also a host plant for swallowtail butterflies. Even if you plan to cut the dill flowers for pickles or bouquets, good insects can still benefit from these blooms. Allowing a few flowers behind for these good bugs will help out even more.
Add Flowers to Dishes
Dill flowers have a flavor that’s similar to the foliage, so you can use them in most places you would use the leaves. Just be aware that they have a more rigid texture than the foliage.
The flowers are especially popular additions to dill pickles. Not only do they add notes of the irreplaceable dill flavor, but they also add a beautiful color to the jars of green pickles.
Drawbacks of Letting Your Dill Flower
Although there are many benefits of letting your dill flower, it comes with some drawbacks. The following are reasons why you may want to remove your dill before it blooms.
Takes Up Space
If you have a small garden and only want to harvest dill leaves, leaving the plant in the ground once it starts to flower may feel like a waste of space. Dill takes multiple weeks to produce mature flowers once it starts to bolt. You can continue to harvest the leaves after the plant sends up a flower stalk, but the harvest will be smaller.
Removing the dill plants when their leaf production begins to dwindle will allow you to plant a new crop in their place. If you want to enjoy dill all season long, you can succession plant the seeds two or three weeks apart.
Provides Shade
When dill switches from leaf to flower production, it sends up tall flower stalks that can shade out other plants. A few flowering dill plants won’t provide intense shade, but a row of plants will. If you’re worried about the flowers shading out other plants, you might not want to let your plant go to flower.
