In today's Q&A, we're going to be talking about what to do when herbs start to flower.

This question comes from Laura, and I feel like that it will apply to so many new gardeners who are growing herbs for perhaps the first time.

She says, I planted an herb garden for the first time this year and it has been doing great, I thought.

My dill plants are now really tall with thick stems. I have been trimming it weekly, but it's

already starting to go to seed. Is there any way to keep the plant harvesting now or is it too

late? My cilantro has done the same thing. This is a very common question because this

happens to all of us. The first thing you want to figure out is if the herb you're talking about

is an annual or a perennial. An annual herb is one that is going to start flowering and going to seed in the same season

because its whole life cycle is that one season. A perennial herb is one that will come back

year after year if you're in the correct zone. And both annual and perennial herbs will flower,

but when they flower, they signal two different things.

So let me give you some examples,

and let's start out with Laura's example

of dill and cilantro.

As annual herbs and as herbs that are a little bit particular

when it comes to heat, those will tend to go to see the same season and there really

isn't anything to do about it. Just like lettuce as we talked about in a previous Q&A episode,

that just signals the end of their life cycle. The good news with Dill in particular is that

Dill grows really fast and so what I recommended to

Laura is that she go ahead and let her dill go to seed and then a lot of times my

dill just drops its seed and continues to produce the same season or you could even

take the seed that you had planted ahead of time if you planted dill seeds

...