Chives at your Fingertips

Chives are a personal favorite of mine. This herb was the first that I
regularly went out in the garden to snip in the evening when I was about to start cooking dinner. I keep a special pair of "herb" scissors in a kitchen drawer, together with a small wicker basket to help me harvest the night's herb choices. I have lots of snipping herbs now, parsley, oregano, marjoram, thyme, basil, bay, and rosemary to name a few, but chives were the first.

An Onion in Disguise

Chives are a member of the onion family and impart a mild onion flavor when sprinkled fresh on meats and vegetables. They will grow easily where you have well drained soil and will survive a hard freeze if mulched in the fall. Every year I bring chives indoors over the winter and have a couple of pots in sunny windows until spring.

Useful Around the Kitchen

I think of chives as a staple herb; it doesn’t retain much flavor when dried (my dried chives are usually only flavorful for about a month), so I always have some fresh on hand. I use chives regularly as a seasoning and garnish on almost all of my vegetables. It makes a good stand in for green onion, and I throw some into my mashed potatoes and as a finishing touch for my cream soups and sauces.

Easy to Grow

In spring chives have very attractive purple flowers. Chives also fill in bare corners in the garden, producing a good crop on very little real estate. They ask very little. I give them some attention in spring with compost, and make sure not to cut them too close to the soil when I harvest them.