dill

[binthere]

travelling along highway #3 around the burdett area i noticed a few hundred acres of dill. does anyone know much about this crop? costs to grow and what it fetches per pound?

[farmaholic]

Hate to ask but are you sure its dill?
Maybe Coriander or Caraway?
Is dill grown as a field crop?

[ado089]

That guy has his own processing plant and grows a bunch of spices. He extracts the oils. Beyond that it's been years since I talked to him so I'm a bit out of the loop.

[binthere]

oh maybe. it sure looked like the dill we grow in the garden and it smelled like dill. we were cruising on the bikes and could smell it for miles before we saw it. did not stop though should have i guess. thanks.

[jethro456]

It is dill. Like ado said, he does all of the extraction himself. Very high maintenance crop from what I understand.

[binthere]

so any idea as to the costs of production and return. i tried to research and found very little. talked to one person who seemed to know a little. but i dont want to repeat what i was told as far as return for processed dill oil. seemed far fetched.

[seedsman]

A few farmers grow dill in that area. Some is dryland, and some irrigated. Production costs are probably not much different from other field crops. However, processing costs would be quite high. Crop is swathed, chopped like silage and then steam is pushed through the load to take the oil out. Oil is then separated from the water after the steam condenses.

[binthere]

thanks guys. one more question is the seed not used to extract oil to and is it used for seed or do they have to buy seed annually?

[cottonpicken]

Maybe essential oil market if it is he is rich.

[sumdumguy]

Our son experimented with 40 acres of dill in about 1995. It grew well, lots of seeds in hopper. We cleaned it and bagged it. There was no Canadian market and we weren't foreign marketing yet. We buried about 300 bags.

[jamesb]

we grew dill back in the 90's. it is easy to grow but you deal with volunteers for years. The idea was and is that it is going to have industrial use beyond the spice and essential oil market. This market is very easy to overproduce. Back in the 90's we had a very active herb and spice assn that had growers doing all sorts of things. I think coriander was one of the few crops that proved to have some potential. Carraway to leaser degree.