Chives

We grow "regular" chives and garlic chives (below).

Chives ©Janet AllenChives in bloom

Chives are very easy to grow, and they're quite ornamental. We have three or four thriving clumps of chives, and I dutifully snip them and freeze for later. However, "later" sometimes doesn't come often enough. It's too bad since they add a nice mild oniony flavor and the little snippets of chives add some nice color to a dish.

 ©Janet Allen
Great food for our pollinators

Bees appreciate chive blossoms and the blossoms of other herbs. This is a good reason to grow herbs even if we never used the herbs themselves at all.

Garlic chives (aka Chinese leeks)

Garlic chives ©Janet Allen
One of our patches of garlic chives

Years ago we bought garlic chives, and they've popped up here and there in the garden ever since. We didn't do much with them, just noticed they were there. We've found that we just don't use produce that isn't connected recipes.

This year, though, we decided to use them. We've become much more casual about cooking the last few years and less tied to recipes. So instead of looking for a recipe that uses garlic chives, we just chopped up a bunch and added them to a stir fry. We added quite a few since they're fairly mild. They add a nice garlicky flavor, and they're obviously easy to grow since they've thrived under our benign neglect over the years.

Harvest record for both kinds of chives

YR LB Notes
15
14 0 We didn't bother picking much
13 0 We still had some in the freezer from the previous year; have to use it more!
12 3 oz