Dill

Anethum graveolens

Apiaceae

Feathery kitchen green and a caraway-cousin seed — the pickle herb, also an after-dinner chew.

Culinary seed and weed. Identify carefully among feathery umbels.

Parts used: Leaf · Ripe seed
Traditional notes: Pickles and fish · After-meal seed · Traditional colic folklore (weak tea)
Grow · USDA 6b: Annual. Cool season. Direct-sow successions. It resents transplanting. In work: Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug
Harvest: Leaf before bloom; seed when umbels brown.

Sow every three weeks for leaf. One planting is a bolt.
Keep away from fennel if you save seed.
The swallowtail caterpillar is a lodger, not a disaster — plant extra.

Safety

Unidentified wild umbels

Companions

Plant with Broccoli, Cabbage, Calendula, Cornflower, Cucumber, French marigold.

Keep apart from Carrot, Fennel.

Lookalikes

Poison hemlock — A feathery roadside weed is not a pickle herb. Dill is annual and yellow; hemlock is a biennial tower with white umbels.
Fennel — Anise cousins in the same bed will cross and confuse a seed harvest. Neither is hemlock, and both have been mistaken for it.

Lore

Dill comes from Old Norse dilla, to lull — a colic name. The feathery weed and the seed are one annual in a hurry. Keep it from fennel if you care about honest grandchildren.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.