Table of contents:

Dill: Agricultural Technology, Varieties, Storage
Dill: Agricultural Technology, Varieties, Storage

Video: Dill: Agricultural Technology, Varieties, Storage

Video: Dill: Agricultural Technology, Varieties, Storage
Video: 7 Israeli Agriculture Technologies 2024, March
Anonim

How to provide a family with fragrant dill for the whole year

dill
dill

What am I talking about? Naturally, about all of us familiar dill, which everyone would like to have on the table all year round. Alas, in practice everything turns out to be not quite that simple. On the market, some grannies begin to actively trade in dill already at the end of May, and they have fluffy and fragrant dill - you can't take your eyes off!

At the same time, in many vegetable gardens, dill is still growing (and rarely, rarely, as if it was not sown at all), and later does not form the desired luxurious greenery, rapidly turning into color. Such dill can not be added either to a salad or to boiled potatoes - it is suitable only for salting.

What is the matter here? And the fact is that for all the unpretentiousness of this spice, there are several tricks, without the use of which fluffy, delicate and aromatic dill cannot be obtained.

Gardener's guide

Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

About some of the tricks of dill agricultural technology

The thing is that you can't do without a greenhouse or greenhouse on biofuel to get lush and early greens of dill. But this is not the only trick. High soil fertility, regular watering, the degree of illumination and the choice of variety are also important. Of course, the greenhouse is not intended for growing dill, but in early spring it can still be used only for obtaining greens and cold-resistant seedlings, and therefore it would be wise to allocate part of the area for dill.

Moreover, cucumbers, for example, are very good at being next to dill (although they cannot stand many other aromatic herbs, so they may well coexist for a while. By the way, it is greenhouse dill (we are talking about early spring) that grows more tender, in while dill from open areas can be rougher if you do not keep it under the covering material.

As for the use of biofuel, we really need it when growing vegetables. Firstly, without such heating of the greenhouse (other heating methods are expensive and many cannot afford) it will be dangerous to plant heat-loving crops early in it. Secondly, it will not be possible to use the greenhouse for an early spring harvest - the plants simply will not have time to grow, because they will have to be sown later. Thirdly, the new greenhouse soil still needs to be formed on the basis of something, because the old soil (at least its upper layer) has to be removed due to the presence of pathogens of various kinds of diseases in it. It is easier to form a new soil based on a variety of organic matter - partly laid in the fall, partly added in the spring.

When laying biofuels, it should be borne in mind that the layer of fresh manure must be at a sufficiently large depth, otherwise the dill crop will contain nitrates, or even refuse to grow at all and turn yellow. It is clear that this is important not only for dill, but also for thermophilic crops that are later planted in the greenhouse.

Notice board

Kittens for sale Puppies for sale Horses for sale

dill
dill

The top layer of greenhouse ridges should be very fertile and neutral in terms of acidity - with insufficient nutrition, dill grows poorly, immediately becomes tough and turns into color.

As for soil moisture, dill is very demanding in this regard (especially in the first three weeks of development) - with a lack of moisture, its leaves become small, coarse, and thereby reduce the yield and product quality. Dill is also picky about the level of illumination, since it is very light-loving - it grows and develops poorly in shaded areas, quickly stretches and lays down, and at the same time becomes less aromatic.

In addition, the degree of softness and fluffiness of dill greens depends on the variety - at the moment there are so-called strongly leafy and even bush varieties of dill on sale, which are bushy much more than traditional varieties (that is, Gribovsky and Lesnogorodsky). Moreover, such varieties later throw out the flower arrow (since they do not have such a pronounced reaction to lengthening daylight hours), which ensures a longer period of consumption of fresh herbs. In terms of obtaining greens, bush dill (varieties Buyan, Salut, Alligator, Richelieu, etc.) is more promising.

Shrub dill has a thicker and more powerful bush with a base of 5-6 closely spaced internodes (and not 1-2, as usual) and forms lateral shoots that grow from the sinuses. As a result, it is possible to collect greens from bush varieties for a longer period. First, the greens obtained by thinning are consumed. Then the leaves are cut off as they grow, starting from the lower tier and gradually moving to the leaves of the lateral shoots. And only with the beginning of flowering, the bush is cut off completely.

By the way, in order to save money (if you sow a lot of dill), you can breed a kind of bush dill yourself by crossing dill from purchased seeds of bush varieties with dill grown on your site. I personally did just that ten years ago. In reality, of course, the end result is not a real bush dill, but a cross between ordinary and bush dill. In my case, for example, dill came out with actively formed lateral shoots and 3-4 closely spaced internodes, but this is also not bad, since the savings on seeds are impressive. Of course, any reader will tell me to this that it would be wiser to do without crossing, collecting seeds from an elite bush dill. Alas, in the Urals this number does not work, since bush dill form seeds later than usual - as a result, they simply do not have time to ripen.

Dill conveyor

dill
dill

In order to have on the table fragrant and rich in vitamins and essential oil dill greens from spring to autumn, you have to sow it many times during the season and in different variations. The very first crops are sown in a greenhouse or greenhouse. At the same time, I, for example, sow part of the estimated areas with dry seeds, and part with germinated seeds.

Germination, in fact, allows you to speed up the harvest by about a couple of weeks, since it is carried out at home at a temperature of 20 … 22 ° C. To do this, around mid-April (a week before the expected sowing), you should wet the usual sawdust and spread them in a thin layer (about half a centimeter) in low containers. Then spread the seeds on a layer of sawdust and cover them with another layer of sawdust of the same thickness.

After that, the containers are placed in slightly opened plastic bags. After about a week, the seeds begin to hatch and white roots will appear. After that, they immediately start sowing, evenly scattering the dill seeds along with sawdust over the allotted area of the greenhouse, and then sprinkle the crops with a thin layer of soil.

After that, the ridges are actively watered and covered with a layer of thin covering material, laid directly on the soil. In addition, mini-greenhouses are installed in the greenhouse, covered with foil or thick covering material. And in open ground, dill is sown at several times - the first time - before winter, then several times during the spring and summer, from May to early August. If you grow seeds on the site yourself, then winter sowing is usually not required, since dill grown on the site from self-seeding will be more than enough.

Of course, the self-seeding option will not suit everyone, since dill is sown at its own discretion - as a result, somewhere later it will have to be removed even at the germination stage, and if left weeding the ridges more carefully, because you will have to look out not only for the seedlings of the main crops, but also for dill. In addition, scattered seeds will be destroyed if the ridges are dug up in the spring, which is done by many gardeners (for me this is no longer relevant, since I do not dig up the ridges, but only loosen them in the fall with a flat cutter).

By the way, you can sow seeds sprouted in sawdust in open ground - this will allow you to get a harvest not only earlier, but also in a larger volume, since the percentage of germinated seeds will be higher. At an early stage, it is wiser to keep crops under covering material, which will reduce the activity of irrigation and eliminate the necessary loosening of the soil. In addition, dill forms more tender greens under the covering material.

How to save dill for future use

dill
dill

Since the sowing season in our country does not differ in duration, and buying dill in the winter (although it can be found in supermarkets without any problems at any time of the year) is not very good for health and wallet, then you have to make stocks of dill for the winter.

The best thing is to freeze it in a special compartment of the freezer. To do this, the grass must be washed, dried (more convenient on a sheet folded in several layers) and finely chopped, then placed in bags and frozen. You cannot freeze raw grass (that is, undried), as it will freeze, and then it will be very difficult to pour the required amount of spice from the bag. In winter, as needed, you take out such a bag of grass, take the required amount of greens from it (there are no problems here, since with proper preparation, the contents of the bag are not a solid monolith, but crumble perfectly) and immediately put it back into the freezer.

This frozen herb can be added not only to hot dishes (boiled, stewed, etc.), but also to salads. Repeated freezing of thawed greens is unacceptable, just as thawed grass cannot be stored - it becomes watery, soft and loses most of its taste and aroma.

If the size of the freezer does not allow you to provide yourself with frozen dill for the entire autumn-winter-spring season, then you will have to resort to drying. Dill should be dried somewhere in the shade, in a draft. Then the dried shoots must first be cut and then ground in two stages: first in a meat grinder, and then in a coffee grinder. In this case, you will receive dill powder, which has long been offered by efficient companies under a variety of names - both as a spice and as a dietary supplement.

True, you need to keep in mind that grinding the grass is possible only if it is perfectly dried, otherwise the grass will be constantly pressed in a meat grinder and spoil a lot of your blood. Therefore, I keep the dill for half a month at home in a cloth bag (in the dark) with the heating on, and only then start processing it. Theoretically, there is still a variant of salting dill, but, in my opinion, this is the most unfortunate way of preserving it, since the use of salted dill is limited - in fact, these are only hot dishes (mainly soups).

Recommended: