Dill may not be the most popular herb to grow, but it's incredibly useful in a vegetable garden. Like other umbellifers, dill supports a wide range of beneficial insects and sends up beautiful flowers that both gardeners and pollinators can appreciate. Companion planting with dill can support nearby herbs and vegetables by deterring pests, attracting predatory insects, improving soil condition, and attracting pests away from other crops.
This guide gives a breakdown of which plants grow best with dill, how dill can be used to improve yields, and what to avoid planting with dill for a healthier garden.
Skip Ahead: Benefits of companion planting with dill • Best dill companions • Bad companions for dill • Dill pests
Benefits of companion planting with dill
There are many ways to use companion planting to improve soil health and grow happier plants, including trap cropping, using insectary plants to attract predatory insects, using pest deterring plants, and more. Here are a few reasons to try companion planting with dill:
- Attracting pollinators: Dill flowers support hoverflies, bees, and butterflies. Planted next to fruiting vegetables, this can help improve pollination and yields.
- Attracting beneficial insects: In addition to pollinators, dill attracts predatory and parasitic insects. These can help reduce populations of common garden pests (aphids, mites, thrips) as well as more plant-specific pests like hornworms and diamondback moths.
- Deterring pests: Dill deters most common brassica pests, including aphids, spider mites, and cabbage loopers.
- Trapping pests: As a trap crop, dill can help protect tomatoes and other nightshades from tomato hornworms.
- Maximizing space: Dill can grow with some root crops without competing with them for root space. It can also grow to over three feet tall, providing shade for shorter plants in midsummer.
The best dill companion plants
As an insectary plant that can also deter some pests, dill has a lot of companion planting options. It can benefit some fruiting vegetables and brassicas, and it can also benefit from growing near other aromatic plants.
Generally, dill wants to grow in well draining, rich soil and full sun. Whatever you decide to plant it with, make sure that those companions share dill's requirements or will enjoy growing in its shade.
Here are a few companion herbs and vegetables that grow particularly well with dill:
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1. Onions
Umbellifers and alliums are great companion plants for managing pests, and they make an ideal pairing. Companion planting with onions can help deter dill pests like carrot fly by masking the herb's scent, while dill attracts predators that may help with onion thrips. The same applies to growing onions with carrots and to planting dill with other alliums.
Read More: The 20 Best Companion Plants for Onions
2. Garlic
Like onions, interplanting with garlic can help deter pests by masking the scent of nearby plants. In fact, DIY garlic sprays are a popular method of repelling insects among organic gardeners. Dill planted with garlic is thought to improve garlic flavor, while the garlic might help manage aphids, armyworms, and cutworms.
Read More: How to Plant and Grow Garlic for Storage
3. Cucumbers
Planting dill near cucumbers can improve your cucumber harvest by attracting pollinators and other beneficial insects. Specifically, dill supports tachinid flies and Brachonid wasps, two parasitic insects that prey on cucumber beetles. If you decide to grow cucumbers next to dill, just make sure that they're planted so that neither plant shades out the other-- both need full sun.
Read More: The 15 Best Companion Plants for Cucumbers
4. Tomatoes
Planting tomatoes with dill can improve the tomatoes' health, but only while the dill is still young. At its earlier stages, dill is a great tomato companion; it will attract hornworms away from the tomatoes, and it will keep other pests in check by attracting their predators. But once dill flowers and starts to go to seed, it can actually hamper tomatoes' growth. At that point, it should be harvested or transplanted to another part of the garden.
Read More: The 11 Best Companion Plants for Tomatoes
5. Corn
Corn often suffers from corn earworms, which lay their eggs on corn leaves and burrow through the ears. Dill can help with this by attracting general predators like lacewings and ladybugs, as well as the parasitic Trichogramma wasps that target earworms.
6. Lettuce
If you struggle with aphids, try planting dill as a barrier crop for your lettuces. As a tall aromatic herb, it can create a sort of barrier around vulnerable neighbors. It will also bring balance to any aphid or mite populations, as it attracts generalist predators like lacewings, ladybugs, and hoverflies.
Read More: 8 Easy-to-Grow Summer Lettuce Varieties
7. Kale
Dill is an excellent companion plant for brassicas like kale because it can help keep brassica pests in check. Dill repels cabbage loopers, cabbage moths, and cabbage worms. The predatory insects and parasitic wasps it attracts also prey on pests like aphids and caterpillars. Dill and kale will grow well together in moderately rich soil and full sun.
Read More: Top 9 Companion Plants for Kale
8. Broccoli
Like kale, broccoli benefits from dill's ability to deter pests and attract beneficial insects. In fact, aromatic herbs like dill, rosemary, and thyme are some of the best companion plants for broccoli thanks to their ability to mask broccoli's scent and confuse or deter pests.
9. Cabbage
Planting dill with cabbage can reduce damage from diamondback moths, cabbage worms, cabbage loopers, aphids, and mites. A strong companion planting strategy for protecting brassicas like cabbage from these pests would be to interplant them with dill, marigolds, and alliums like chives, onions, or garlic. All of the above will help to mask cabbage's scent or actively deter its pests.
10. Chives
Chives can be used to repel aphids and carrot flies, two of the more common dill pests. They'll also flower in the early summer to attract pollinators and hoverflies, helping to keep pest populations manageable. Dill and chives grow well together in well-drained, rich soil in a full sun position. Planting chives in the shade cast by dill can extend their growing season slightly.
Read More: The 12 Best Companion Plants for Chives
Bad companion plants for dill
Herbs and vegetables that shouldn't be planted with dill are those that have dissimilar growing requirements, are very closely related to dill, or will actively be harmed by growing nearby. Here are a few things to avoid planting near dill:
1. Nightshades
Though dill can grow well with tomatoes while it's young, it shouldn't be grown with other nightshades. Dill planted with potatoes, peppers, or eggplants will stunt their growth and result in poorer yields. As an alternative, keeping dill in a nearby pot could attract hornworms away from these plants.
Read More: The 17 Best Potato Companion Plants
2. Umbellifers
Dill should not be planted with other carrot family plants, including carrots, parsley, cilantro, or fennel. All of these plants are closely related, making it easier for pests like carrot fly to locate and colonize them. To avoid pest and disease buildup in the soil, it's ideal to rotate carrot family plants to a new plot in the garden every year.
3. Mediterranean herbs
Though they're some of the most popular herbs to grow, Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, thyme, oregano, and sage won't thrive in the same conditions as dill. Dill prefers a loamy soil rich in organic matter, while these hardy aromatics do best in a fast draining soil with little nutrition.
Read More: The 11 Best Companion Plants for Rosemary
Common dill pests
Dill shares common pests with its close relatives parsley, cilantro, and carrots. Significant damage from aphids or mites is rare for dill, but the plants can be mowed to the ground by black swallowtail caterpillars.
These caterpillars go through two generations in a season, and they can do substantial damage to dill leaves. Luckily, their adult form-- spicebush, tiger, pipevine, and eastern black swallowtail butterflies-- are so beautiful that most gardener's pain at some lost dill leaves will be short lived.