There are plenty of gardeners well versed in growing chives in a garden and know a seminar's worth of ways for using the chives plant. I must confess, however, chives came into my life through a happy accident some years ago. As a gardener, herbs were astonishingly absent from my style of cooking, but chives changed all that. My experience drew me to reintroduce you to chives by unearthing some of the pleasant and somewhat surprising useful discoveries about growing and using chives my happy accident taught me as a novice gardener.
Most of us, including me, think of chives as these dried up little green pieces that look like they were taken from our lawn and maybe have a tiny residue of taste surviving in them. Probably our most frequent initial introduction to chives in cooking is as a condiment for a baked potato...as in sour cream with chives. The fascinating features of chives as a plant and herb have been much maligned due to its past classification as a common household herb. This is what I found out as a novice gardener when I somehow mistakenly ordered 9 chives plants, but intended to get only 1.
Chives - The Plant
While chives are part of the onion family, their flavor is much milder and more subtle. Until you've tasted fresh chives you won't believe the difference in taste from those dried up herbs you buy at the store! Chives grow in clumps, which is why they're always referred to as plural. The upright green shoots that grow from the clumps are really called the leaves of the plant.
Growing chives isn't hard. I'm prime proof of that. In fact, I classify them along side daylilies for ease of growing, because they're as indestructible no matter the amount of rain or scorching heat. I hadn't a clue how to plant my chives plants when they arrived, and they've survived in the clay soil of hot Kentucky summers for almost a decade now. You can even dig up their roots (actually little onion-like bulbs), divide them, and replant them just like daylilies! Chives are best planted in a healthy mixture of soil, peat, sand and compost, but my ignorance proves chives plants do well as long as they have plenty of sun and some water now and then.
By the way, chives plants are also perennial. That means, the plant dies back through the winter and sprouts new leaves in the spring. Perennials make a gardener's life easier simply because they DO automatically emerge every year without my help. In the spring, the chives plant produces a bounty of beautiful purple flowers that sprout on tall stems. Who knew growing chives produced beautiful flowers, too? The flowers, similar in shape to the flowers in clover but bigger, can be used in dried ornamental bouquets. The bees happen to love those flowers. Just by growing my chives, there's this added benefit of attracting bees for pollinating some of my other garden plantings.
Another side benefit for my outdoor garden is the chives plants actually protect my other plants and flowers from unwanted insects--like Japanese beetles. Apparently insects find the growing chives to be repulsive. Use the juice of the leaves in the same way.
The Culinary Side of Chives
Chives are chock full of vitamin A and C, calcium and iron. A great choice to flavor foods, cut chives are fat free and combine well with more than sour cream and cream cheese. I found them a winning alternative to the standby salt seasoning. Harvesting chives is a simple task. Simply snip some of those leaves (the soft green shoots) down to the base. The chives plant will continuously regrow the leaves during its growing season.
Chop the leaves into smaller pieces and use them fresh. Store what you don't use in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for about a week. Postpone washing the chives plant leaves until you use them because the extra moisture makes them wilt and decay more rapidly.
Add them for flavoring to soups, sandwiches, fish, vegetable dishes, sauces, and salads. The vast variety of its culinary uses can ignite those creative juices in your cooking. For instance, I have a friend whose family loves to enjoy 'chives sandwiches' every spring. Avoid the mistake of growing chives as a garden herb simply for a garnish...it's so much more versatile.
