Dill

Dill is one of the most useful herbs in the kitchen garden: the feathery leaves (dill weed) and the flat seed heads go into pickles, fish, potato salad and much of Scandinavian and eastern European cooking. It grows 2 to 4 feet, with flat yellow umbels in midsummer, and it bolts quickly in heat, so succession sowing is the only way to have leaf all season.

Direct sow a quarter inch deep a few weeks before last frost and every three weeks until midsummer, in full sun and ordinary soil that drains; it has a taproot and dislikes transplanting. Thin to 6 to 12 inches, water in dry spells, and cut leaves from the time the plant is 6 inches tall. For seed, let the heads ripen on the plant and cut them into a paper bag. 'Fernleaf' and 'Dukat' hold leaf longest; 'Bouquet' and 'Mammoth' are the pickle-head types.

Do not plant dill near fennel; they cross-pollinate and both lose their character. The umbels are among the best flowers in the garden for beneficial insects, drawing hoverflies, lacewings and the tiny parasitic wasps that control aphids, and dill is a host plant for the black swallowtail butterfly, whose striped caterpillars are worth a plant or two of their own. Let some go to seed for volunteers next year. Deer leave it alone.