Dreams of Dill

Every year I plant dill in my garden. It is a great plant to have around. Fresh dill adds extra flavor to so many dishes - creamy dressings, salads, sandwiches, veggie wraps, and so many others. It grows to about 2 feet tall, and it's feathery leaves make a lovely contrast to other garden plants.

Or at least that is how I always imagine it when I plant it. Some years I start from seed, others from a nursery transplant. My hope is that one year I will have a dill plant that actually survives.

Snails love dill. (Actually, the snails around here are very voracious, and will eat just about anything, especially when the plants are small.) So every year I plant some dill plants, and try various things to protect them from the snails. I start with the organic solutions, since I prefer to grow an organic garden.

1. Sprinkle a ring of crushed eggshells around the plant. The snails are not supposed to cross it, since is sharp and rough. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the snails where I live. I planted my dill plant, circled it with eggshells, and woke up the next morning to a decimated plant.

2. Diatomaceous earth. Supposedly works the same way as the eggshells. I guess it does, because once again I woke up to decimated dill plants.

3. Put a copper strip around your plant. (The copper is supposed to create a small electrical charge that the snails don't like, and they will avoid crossing the copper strip.) These snails apparently crawled down a branch of a nearby plant, and enjoyed a lovely meal of dill. Then they finished off the leaves on the nearby plant!

4. Try the copper strip again, with no nearby plants. Somehow, those snails still found their way to the dill. Maybe I have a hybridized kind of snail that has learned how to hop or fly.

5. Sink containers half full of beer all around the garden. This is supposed to attract the snails, and they will leave your plants alone. Someone forgot to tell my snails that they like beer better than dill.

6. Go to extremes, and use some kind of commercialized snail bait. This might have worked better, but I couldn't bring myself to add those chemicals directly to my garden, and I just put it on the walks, patios, and nearby flowerbeds. I think I got rid of as many snails just picking them by hand and disposing of them as the snail bait did.

7. Give up, and plant a pot of dill on my kitchen counter. Come home from work to find my crazy cat chowing down on the dill plant.

It looks like my dream of dill plants in my garden will continue to be just that, a dream.