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Psychologists say that the kind of green indoor plants helps to survive the winter. If you grow dill and other herbs on the windowsill, the benefits of such plantations will be many times more, because the plants will not only remind you of summer, but also supplement the ration with vitamin greens.
Despite its unpretentiousness on the garden, in the conditions of an apartment, dill requires more attention, but in response to proper care, it will certainly please with fragrant foliage and long vegetation. How to grow dill at home? What features of sowing and care for this crop exist, and what can interfere with obtaining a rich harvest of greenery on the windowsill?
Choosing the variety of dill for the window sill
If, when sowing parsley or celery, you should expect the emergence of the peduncle only the following year, then when growing dill from seeds in a dry, warm microclimate of the room, the plant may bloom without forming foliage. Therefore, the yield of the garden on the windowsill primarily depends on the choice of variety for planting. Today there are several dozen decent varieties that have worked well in the open field. For pot culture suitable plants, as long as possible and abundantly giving a green mass.
An example of such varieties may be:
- Asparagus Bouquet.
- Superdukat.
- Beam.
- Abundant.
- Kibray.
The dill plants forming a dense green shrub on the windowsill feel good.
If necessary, it is possible to pinch actively growing shoots than to cause branching and the emergence of new foliage.
Cultivation of dill from seeds at home
Like other umbrella crops, dill is characterized by tight germination. This is due to the essential oils that protect the seed, but also slows it to peck. How to grow dill at home and bring the appearance of greens?
If you do not take special measures, you will have to wait at least two weeks for seedlings to appear, even with regular watering, before sowing the seeds. To do this, use warm water or a solution of biostimulants, and in the latter case, after a daily stay in a solution of Kornevin or Ribav-Extra, the sprouts appear already at 3-4 days, and the germination rate increases to 100%.
Which containers are suitable for growing dill from seed? For sowing dill prepare a wide container or a pot with drainage holes. The capacity is selected in such a way that several plants planted from intervals of 7–10 cm are not too crowded. A layer of drainage, 1.5–2.5 cm thick, is made of fine expanded clay or crushed stone.
Soil for growing dill at home should be loose, well-retaining moisture, not sour and fertile. A ready-mixed soil mixture for vegetable crops or seedlings is quite suitable, but it is possible to obtain soil by mixing garden soil, peat, sand and humus in equal proportions. Sowing is carried out in a moist soil to a depth of about a centimeter. In order to initially avoid excessive planting density, seeds are buried at intervals of 2–3 cm, sprinkling peat on top and carefully compacting the soil.
As they germinate, they are additionally thinned out so that the plants do not interfere with each other and do not stretch out due to the lack of space, nutrition and light.
Features care
However, such a measure is clearly not enough. Even in the south-side room, the illumination is lower than on a garden bed, and the air is sometimes drier and warmer than the ideal temperature range of 16–22 ° C for culture. Therefore, it is more difficult to grow dill on the windowsill than in the open field.
Although the culture is cold-resistant, and home-grown dill bushes will not lose their ability to grow even when the temperature drops to +8 ° C.But, being in a hot room, with a lack of watering, the plants refuse to form leaves and quickly release flower stalks. Dill perfectly reacts to moisture, but here it is important to remember: “the higher the temperature, the more often and more abundant watering”.
- If the window sill is cool enough, excess moisture can cause root decay and plant death.
- In hot weather or when the heating is on, the lack of moisture is quickly recognized by sluggish bleached shoots.
- At temperatures above +25 ° C, dill on the windowsill should be regularly sprayed, this will help the plant to cope with increased dryness of the air and heat.
Watering is carried out as the soil dries out, in small portions, preventing the formation of a dense crust on the soil.
So that as the bushes grow, they do not experience a nutritional deficiency, they feed the dill twice a month on the windowsill. To do this, you can use complex additives with a low nitrogen content so that this element does not accumulate in the greens supplied to the table.
Lighting conditions for growing dill from seeds
Green areas in the apartment are given the brightest places, taking care that the direct rays of the sun don't fall on the pots.
If sowing dill, even at home, takes place from March to August, on well-lit windowsills, plants create lush bushes and do not require additional lighting.
But most often dill is grown at home in the winter. And here not to do without artificial illumination of landings. It is best to hang a special fitolamp at a height of 50–60 cm from home plantations, giving the spectrum that plants need. If this is not possible, fluorescent white light lamps are suitable. Taking into account the illumination of daylight for dill on the windowsill should last up to 13-15 hours. Such a measure is especially important at the stage of emergence of shoots, until the plants have risen and strengthened.
When receiving the required amount of light, the bushes will not lean toward the window glass, stretch out and look weak.
How to grow dill on the windowsill, so that the flow of greens on the table was uninterrupted? Unlike parsley, which for a long time produces new leaves instead of harvested ones, greens are practically not formed in dill after cutting. Therefore, the next batch of seeds is sown 14–20 days after the first sowing. In this case, on the windowsill there will always be dill with commercial herbs of about 10 centimeters ready to be harvested.
