These chives unexpectedly survived a Minnesota winter unprotected in a window box. Photo taken April 7, 2009
Chives are always one of the first plants to break ground in my garden. I can’t count the number of years I saw their green shoots peeking through the snow. Even late season snowfalls don’t set them back. Conversely, in the fall they are one of the last, if not the last, garden plant to succumb to frost.
The use of chives is first documented by the ancient Chinese back in 3000 BC. Marco Polo is credited with bringing them back to Italy from the Orient. Roman armies helped to spread them across the rest of Europe. Chives now grow wild throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere.
A member of the onion family, chives are a hardy perennial known as Allium shoenoprasum. They are thought to originate in Siberia and the temperate regions of Southeast Asia.
There’s also garlic flavored chives, Allium tuberosum. It’s easy to tell regular chives and garlic chives apart: regular chives have round, hollow leaves and their light lavender flowers bloom in spring; garlic chives have flat leaves and their white flowers bloom in fall.
The easiest way to grow chives is to dig up a clump, break it apart, and plant the parts separately. Virtually any gardener who has chives will be more than happy to donate a clump of chives to a budding gardener.
If you want to start them from seed, toss a small handfull into a 3 inch by 3 inch square of your garden. Water well. In a week or so you’ll notice slightly thick, grass-like shoots. During its first summer, cut chives sparsely so most of its energy is put into growing a strong root system. Cover them with leaves or straw their first winter, although they probably will live without it.
They bloom in mid to late spring on erect stalks that hold the blooms above the rosette of leaves. Their light lavender flowers are actually many little flowers radiating out from a central point.
The flowers are edible. They have a rather strong onion taste, so pull the small, individual “flowers” off and toss them into spring salads.
Chives are such a perfect finishing touch to so many dishes, I don’t think I can name them all. Their mild onion flavor is almost never overpowering, if used with a light touch. Sprinkle on salads, or garnish a bowl of soup. Mix with cottage cheese and allow the flavors to blend overnight. Ditto for cream cheese. And let’s not forget the classic sour cream and chives baked potato.
Chives freeze well. Chop or snip them into small pieces and toss in a zip lock plastic bag. The pieces don’t stick together when frozen, so you can just grab what you need.
Once you grow fresh chives, you’ll always grow them. Every year when they come up I imagine our ancestors eagerly looking forward to their first fresh greens of spring. In many cases it may well have been chives.
What a way to wake up your tastebuds after a long winter.
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