Do the chives jive in your fall garden and grow garlic chives. It’s a wonderful way to add good taste to your fall flower garden.

The plants look a lot like common chives – except that the leaves are flat instead of rounded, and they have white flowers instead of pink. They are exceptionally easy to grow.

Unlike the oniory flavor of regular chives, the leaves and blooms of this relative have a mild garlic flavor that goes with just about everything except dessert!  And,

If you like “plant-it”, and “forget-it” crops, you’ll love growing chives!  Give them a site with full sun and well-drained soil, and they’ll produce lots of those tasty leaves without giving you a moment’s trouble.

After all, no self-respecting pest would chew on chives. Deer don’t like them much either!

In fact, the only thing you need to think about is keeping them from being too happy and spreading themselves around your whole garden.

Be sure to keep the pretty flowers picked, too. They are wonderful crumbled into salads or used to add flavor and color to white vinegar.

If the  plants produce more blooms than you can use, be sure to snip them off as soon as the flowers fade. Or else, they’ll drop lots of seeds everywhere. And, you’ll have more chives than you could ever use.

It is best to divide chive bulbs in October. When dividing, leave 6-8 bulbs per clump and transplant to new location. Divide every three to four years to rejuvenate the plants.

Every year they grow larger and more lush. Removing a part of an established clump of chives is barely noticeable.

Before your first hard, killing frost, cut your chives one last time. You can chop or snip these into small bits, place in a plastic zipper bag, and pop into the freezer.

Chives don’t stick to each other when they’re frozen, so it’s easy to grab a few to sprinkle on soups and salads during the winter months.

Chives live for many years and survive even the coldest winter temperatures without protection. They’re also one of the first plants to break into growth in early spring. I’ve often seen chives poking through the snow after a late-season snowfall.

This herb is ideally suited to container culture and will grow happily in potting compost. Container grown plants are more likely to affected by severe frosts, so move the containers close to the house walls in winter.

Want to know more about growing chives (onions) or share your favorite recipe?

Go to the post titled ” Onions In The Fall Garden”

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Yours truly for a great garden with  flowers,berries and veggies

Polly – Organic gardener