Different Shapes and Shades of Greens

My herb plants  ......

Oregano 

Sweet Basil 

Rosemary

Thai Basil

Sawtooth Coriander

Stevia

Dill

Mint

Thymes

Parsley

Curry Leaf

Dill Seeds

About 3 months back, I have done a post on dill, here. These are the photos which I have posted earlier in that post. To summarize, I bought this dill plant from Sg. Buloh, along with several other herb plants. My dill plant has since wilted. The flowers are really very beautiful. Grown in clusters of umbels, with tiny yellow flowers. When I did a search from the web, found out that dill is an annual herb with a short life span. How short is short? I've got no idea!

These are the seeds which I've collected. I tried sowing them once but did not germinate. Soon after that, I found some young seedlings among few of my pots! They must have self seeded as the pots are placed around the pot of dill. 

 Found this young seedling and ....

another one.... 

another one growing among my corianders. Got to replant this in another pot soon.

Hopefully my dill plants will grow healthily and provide me with more seeds to share. I'm really looking forward to save other seeds, but my experience in seed-saving is still very new and there are many things that I'm not sure. Apart from the seeds, the leaves are usually picked when mature and dried and then stored for uses in the kitchen. Do leaves already dried on the plants serve the same purpose? I saved the dried leaves from my dill plant before disposing of the plant when it wilted. The smell of the leaves are still wonderful. Any advise from anyone regarding this? Any difference between the leaves that were picked and then dried, and the leaves already dried naturally on the plants?

The only other seeds that I have saved are from my sawtooth coriander. There will be another post on this.

I'm linking this post to "Seed Week" over at Kebun Malay-Kadazan Girls, a fabulous blog about home-grown veggies and blooms, really a pleasure to read and an inspiration for "green-horn" like me!

Happy Gardening !

Dill

Back to gardening!


Dill has slender stems, and alternate, finely divided, softly delicate leaves which can range from 10-20cm long.  The flowers are white to yellow, in small umbels diameter, about 2 to 9cm.  Dill is originated from Eastern Europe and are now widespread throughout the Mediterranean and West Asia. The fern-like leaves are aromatic and are used to flavour many food such as soups, pickles, dips and other culinary uses.

Dill needs full sun to grow with rich well-drained soil.  This is a short-lived perennial herb. Now that explains why my dill plant is slowly drying and wilting away.  I bought this plant from Sg. Buloh for RM5.00.  I have never seen this being sold anywhere else. 

Surprisingly, this plant is a member of the parsley family!  Dills are grown from seeds. I have yet to try this! It has some medicinal value too. The seeds are used to control flatulence by brewing it as a tea and by chewing a few seeds will help to freshen the breath! 

This photo was taken in August.

This photo was taken in September. In just a month the plant has grown taller with lovely small yellow flowers

A close-up picture of the leaves

Another photo of the leaves

Look at the lovely umbel of small yellow flowers

Close-up photo of the flowers

The dried seeds. Photo taken a few days ago.

Close up photo of the dried seeds. They are very small. 

************************************

This is for you to drool........

This photo was taken last week at my sister's garden. She planted this vine about less than 2 years ago, and look at the little grapes, are you drooling already??  I sure did! This is the second time that the plant is fruiting and it is only one cluster of grapes, bigger bunch than the first time.  I have not tasted it yet! Keeping my fingers crossed that I will have the chance to try this when it ripens, maybe no chance at all, may have to wait for the next batch, hopefully more bunches next time round!