One trick about dill is that it puts down a long tap root. Like carrots. So the cultivated soil should be pretty deep. Dill won't grow well in thin soil.

Good to know. The soil is pretty good, not thin.

A deep sandy soil. Exhibition carrot growers often use those tall blue food containers or dustbins, with a friable soil amended with a lot of horticultural sand. Not a rich soil either - like coriander, dill is happy with a fairly lean soil as long as it has good even depth.

I'd say the soil leans richer -- but would that account for such pokey growth?

Oh, and because dill won't come up until spring bulbs have died back, dill makes a great companion for spring flowers, since it succession plants itself.

It does seem a bi mystifying why it isn't thriving, mxk3. Although, having said tha, when I have grown it, it often looked a bit puny until it suddenly decided to shoot up into flowering growth...which was fine by me but probably not why you are growing it. I mostly grow these things (coriander, anise, chervil etc.) for the flowers anyway...or the seeds, in the case of fennel and zeedman is right - they do seem to respond better to being ignored, left without water or fuss.

When I had a huge garden - and did a lot of canning, I would plant the dill along with the cucumbers and ignored them all... end of school and such... too busy. When I got around to canning I always had dill heads to put in the pickle jars, so I guess they grew together.