Dill is one of my favorite things to grow. If you can beat the caterpillars to it, it is the best thing you can put in chicken soup (well, besides chicken)!

If the caterpillars beat you to it, you get butterflies. If neither of you eat it, butterflies nectar on the flowers and you can enjoy watching them until they go to seed, and then you can gather the seeds for your next crop of Dill.

The Black Swallowtail Butterfly is laying an egg on the Dill flower. Look closely at the bottom of the caterpillar photo to the right and you can see an egg on the flower tip (slightly fuzzy yellow ball) as well as various young stages of her caterpillars.

Left - Red Banded Hairstreak Butterfly nectars on Dill.

Right - some moth looper eats it too.

So - Dill makes a great people food plant for your herb garden, and is also an excellent host and nectar plant for your butterfly garden.

I have more Dill, but not nearly enough right now. I had some going to seed, but we had a drought and water restrictions so I lost those. It's raining again now, so if these few plants give me seeds, I'll plant a larger Dill area and hopefully get more photos for this page! (Mini update - not enough rain, worse restrictions, and still not enough Dill.)