How To Grow, Harvest, And Cook With Chives
Chives-Allium schoenoprasum
If you cook like a gardener or garden like a chef, chives might be the plant for you. Sage cooks know that chives are tough plants with delicate flavors, they are easy to grow, and you can serve the herb raw! We love it in omelets, soups, fish, salad, and even pickled. Just walk out to the garden and clip! Chives are low maintenance, high-yielding, and versatile to use.
People have been eating chives for 5000 years. The Romans brought the herb to Britain, the Vietnamese put them in stir fry, they ate it in the Middle Ages, and Linnaeus recorded them in 1753.
The Two Kinds Of Chives- Flavor Profile
Chives are members of the allium family, along with garlic, onion, and shallots, as well as many plants we favor for their ornamental values. Expect a far more delicate version of the onion-like flavor. Compare the flavor to leeks and you will have it about right.
There are two varieties, similar but with significant differences.
Onion Chive (Allium schoenomrasum)
Also called Common Chive, it is native to Europe and North America. It has a delicate onion flavor, a beautiful flower, usually purple, and hollow leaves. You can eat the whole thing, including the small bulb.
The plant is hardy in zone 3-9
Garlic Chive (Allium tuberosum)
This one has a pretty white blossom and sturdier flat leaves; diced, they have a light garlic flavor. The flavor is a little stronger than Onion chive. It is also called Asian chive or Chinese chive. Eat it raw or stir-fried, or pickled.
The Plant is hardy in zones 4-9.
Note that both of these plants are considered hardy to Zones as far south as nine. We keep them for several years in our humid Zone 10 garden.
Sage Advice:Chives for the Kitchen
We live in an area of South Florida with very good fish. Here is a fast and delicious lemon-chive sauce. Zest and juice a lemon. Add it to melted butter, salt and pepper, and little snips of chive. Pour over the fish.
- Make some Fines Herbes, the classic French seasoning; it is equal parts of French tarragon, parsley, chive, and chervil. Then add its fresh and subtle taste to eggs, poultry, and salads.
- Anything to do with eggs is suitable for chives. Deviled eggs with chive, chive in egg mayonnaise, chive with omelets, you can come up with better ideas.
- Dice some up and put it and some sour cream on a big baked potato.
- Snip them on soup, salad, and dips. Cut them with sharp scissors rather than chopping them. They are delicate and easily damaged. This fact is particularly true of the hollow onion chive.
- Italian fish dishes use Erba cipollina (chives) for brightness.
- This link ill take you to Vietnamese Pickled Chives and bean sprouts, ‘Try it with fish or roast pork.
A Simple Chive Appetizer Idea
I found this pretty Crostini on an Italian cooking website. It is a tasty appetizer to offer some evening. The recipe includes Stracchino, a cheese that comes from the alpine areas of Italy. It is a creamy soft cheese and its name comes from the word for tired. This is apparently because the cheese came from tired cows on their way down from mountain pastures. Robiola is cheese in that family. Try your local specialty cheese shop.
If you can’t find it here are two ideas. Here is a link to a company that advertises it online. I have not tried to make a substitute for Robiola, but here is one suggestion. 1/2 cup mascarpone and 1/3 cup ricotta.
Sage Advice: Chives for the Garden
Seeds
Start the seeds indoors about 4-6 weeks before the date of the last anticipated frost. (Find Your Frost Date) Just enter your zip code. Starting from seed, it should take a year to produce a clump large enough to harvest.
Planting
Plant the new chives in fertile, well-drained soil in full sun although they will grow in less. Add compost or will grow about 12″T and wide. Plant chives after the soil temperature reaches at least 65 degrees.
Growing Chives In Containers And Indoors For Winter
Chives are a small and compact plant and will perform well in containers. This is especially valuable if you have a very small garden or if your herb garden is not convenient to the kitchen you can have a few often-used herbs in a pot near the kitchen.
Because chives will perform in the lower sunlight of winter they are one of the easiest herbs to grow indoors for the winter. Chives are also successful at handling the temperature changes of a kitchen windowsill. Give them 4-6 hours of sun in a south-facing window.
Companion Plantings
Companion planting is placing plant materials together because they can enhance each other’s growth or they can protect each other from pests.
Chives are a small and pretty plant with spring green foliage and a blossom of lavender, white, or pink. Include them anywhere you want, which has appropriate soil and sun conditions. To get the benefits of a companion planting group, these companions together.
Plant them together with carrots, tomatoes, mustard greens, and cabbage. Chives repel carrot flies, aphids, and cabbage worms. Use them near apple trees as they prevent apple scab.
Water And Fertilizer
Water them deeply to ensure that the soil does not dry out around the roots. Use a very light application of fertilizer because over-fertilization will negatively affect the flavor. Use liquid fertilizer at 1/2 the recommended strength every 4-6 weeks.
Maintenance
Use nutrient-rich soil or top-dress in spring with a nitrogen-rich fertilizer. Maintain regular water. Divide the plants every 3-4 years for the best production. If the plant looks tired over time, cut all the stalks back to about 2 inches in height. New material will grow.
Harvesting Chive
Cut chive after it reaches at least 4″ tall. Cut the number of stalks you need near the base of the plant. You can store them in water or in the freezer. Cut only the stalks you wish to use right away as chopping releases the oils with the flavor. Cutting the stalks from the plant will encourage more growth. After the plant is mature cut it back to one or two inches tall each season.
Use the Onion Chive blossom as a garnish or in salads and soups. The taste of the Garlic Chive blossom is very strong. It does look pretty as a garnish or in a vase.
Pests and Diseases
Trouble can happen, occasional powdery mildew; for example, You can see it on the base of the plant, the underside of foliage, or on the blossom. It comes from extreme wet conditions; it appears as grey or white powdery areas that appear as blemishes on the leaf. However, this is a hardy plant. So tough that European Gypsies dried it and hung the bunches to ward off evil spirits!
Companion Plants For Chive
Chives, small and simple to grow, are valuable attractors of beneficial insects and helpful at repelling damaging pests.
Chive has a distinct scent. It can repel several pests such as aphids, mites, carrot flies, Japanese beetles, and weevils. That is beneficial to plants that can be attacked by damaging insects. That means chive is a suitable near neighbor for parsley, broccoli, cabbage, eggplant, mustard, carrots, and beets. Chive is also a good neighbor for potatoes, peppers, rhubarb, roses, strawberries, and tomatoes.
Chive attracts beneficial insects such as bees, butterflies, and beneficial wasps.
Plants that do not perform best next to chive are sage, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and oregano. These herbs prefer much drier conditions than chives. Chives are also not indicated as a companion to beans, asparagus, peas, and spinach.
Summary,
The chive, with its lovely round flower, has benefits we don’t all consider. Chive is a nutrient-dense food. It has low calories but high beneficial nutrients like vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Studies have shown that diets high in flavonoids, such as those found in chives, result in lower cholesterol and blood pressure. Chive has high quantities of vitamin K, which is important to bone health.
Might be worth planting! Happy gardening.