I know dill can get quite large and weedy. Fennel is in the same family, and given a couple of years can turn into a real monster.
Yes, that's a six-foot fence! I planted this Florence fennel as a seedling and failed to harvest the root bulbs. I didn't imagine it would survive Colorado's chilly winters, but it has survived two and thrived. It has also produced numerous seedlings. I've given away some, and need to pull out others and eat them! I also need to hack back the main plant, as it is smothering others around it.
| The coreopsis, or tickseed, being one. Or two, since I planted another right next to it, not realizing coreopsis and tickseed are the same thing. They're two different cultivars, though, and a mass of cheery yellow flowers is never amiss. |  |
A little farther down the row is that monarda I posted about earlier. This is
the same bloom I showed, a couple of days later.
It's really starting to take off, so I expect that next year it will be quite shrubby.
Yesterday I spent several hours removing more sod to make another perennial bed. My original plan was to just clear a ring around the peach tree we planted, but then I got ambitious. More on that later. |  |
Yes, that's a six-foot fence! I planted this Florence fennel as a seedling and failed to harvest the root bulbs. I didn't imagine it would survive Colorado's chilly winters, but it has survived two and thrived. It has also produced numerous seedlings. I've given away some, and need to pull out others and eat them! I also need to hack back the main plant, as it is smothering others around it. 
So funny that you should post this today. Yesterday (and the day before and the day before that) I took lots of pictures of the dill-fennelorama in my veggie garden. The pictures are/were to be used in a post about what I should do with all of it. Cut it back, cut it away, leave it alone??? I THINK that I planted dill a year or so ago, and I MAY have planted fennel a year or so ago. The result is a whole lot of what you show in your picture: tall wispy yellow-flowered herbs that are shading everything else in my garden. So when you see my pictures of fennel-dill don't think I stole the idea from you. (But your post will give me the push I needed to post my pictures.) Have you read that planting dill and fennel together is a real no-no? Apparently many people think they cross-pollinate and produce a dilly fennel with a bad taste. Mine doesn't taste bad, it just doesn't taste definitely like one or the other.
ReplyDeleteFunny! Yes, I had heard that about dill and fennel. I would like to have dill plants, too, but the seeds don't seem to take on the opposite side of the yard.
ReplyDeleteDill is very weedy and grows wild all over the place in some parts of the country.
This main fennel plant I hacked all the way back to about a foot high last fall. If you want to keep yours, you could do that. But it sounds like it's getting out of hand. I'd probably pull most of it out.