The absolute best in my garden this year.

Hello everyone, I'm new here in the Hive Garden, inspired by the posts of one my recent blogging acquaintances, Hive account@riverflows. I live in Cotacachi, Ecuador, in a 2 story building with a small garden that I will introduce properly one of these days. I've been wanting to post in the garden community for a while now, and when I saw today's Question of the Week, I finally told myself:

Now or never.

That is because there is this one plant that I've been so incredibly happy about for weeks now. You see, I love dill. Dill pickles, dill-cucumber-salad, my very own Dill-Dill Pickle-Lupine bean spread. It's a flavor of birth-home, Germany, and a thing of taste bud nostalgia.

Here in Ecuador, it's really, really hard to find dill. Most of the times, when people told me they had dill, it turned out to be fennel. Imagine my disappointment the first times... But I got used to even the supermarkets labeling it wrongly.

A year ago, a friend gave me Dill Seeds. Just one package, maybe 50 seeds. I carefully planted them, and the first rounds did not work out at all. But I kept going. The second round was already better, but since I had limited supply I went for seed-by-seed. Apparently, that's not a good idea for dill, they seem to thrive when in community, competing for nutrients though growing strong in unity. Just like humans could, but look at us... well, not everywhere, growing community is still possible, but that's not the topic here, though interesting.

And starting this year, I got it right. I got huge dill plants, as seen in the picture above, and harvested a lot of leaves to make dill pickles (of which my buddy Hive account@meno just received some, happily I hope), dill spread, onion-dill-paprika spread... Oh my, so many possibilities!

That was already great. But the absolute best part, the addendum that I'm telling everyone, those who are and those who aren't interested? The seeds were from a seed-fast variety! I have little dill plants everywhere now! I'm in heaven!

To be honest, it is getting better now. The lack of dill combined with the influx of expats caused a surging demand for dill, creating a surging cultivation of dill. Still, I like to have everything in my own garden, to know where it comes from, dry it according to my needs and just be able to harvest whenever I need a couple of fresh stalks of delicious dill. And having my own seeds now gives the a certain autonomy, which is another step forward.

It's also an economic progress. The last time I made dill pickles, I taught one of my employees how to make them, and paid her for it. Raising my daughter is taking up and increasing amount of time, running the business more or less on the side doesn't help either, so I created a new job for her. Now, that I have enough dill, I can actually commercialize the pickles, creating yet another source of income for her (and me, I do make a profit on it, too).

With dill, there are only winners.

So far, so good. I hope I did it right, and if not, please let me know! I'm always happy about every feedback of any kind, especially the kind that gives me the opportunity to learn. And if you have gardening tips - I'm all ears. I don't have much time to really get into gardening, but I do enjoy my 2-3h a week, which is almost enough for the small garden I have.