[tip]Chives and perennial onions - Author seraphima

[mitchell]

Chives and perennial onions like garlic chives and multiplier (evergreen or welsh) onions are easy to grow and have many uses.

My favorites are: chopped fresh in tuna or chicken salad, or any kind of salad. Good chopped in cottage cheese. Can also be used instead of onions in many recepies.

Chives can be grown in the flower bed for its flowers, too.

They are a fine companion plant to ward off various bugs for fruit trees and roses, and to keep ants from coming in the house when planted by the doorstep.

These small green onions can be cut, chopped and dried, and used all year in that form.

Basically, you can't have too many of these useful and pretty plants, which are so low maintainance and grow in just average soil conditions. Plant a bunch!

 

[mitchell]

I've been trying to find the chive sets for my gardens and have been coming up empty. I'm looking more for the garlic chives than the regular, but would like to have both. Do you have a supplier to get these puppies from..... NO ONE here in IL or in the WISCO area seems to have them. Do have all the various shallots though, which I already have.

 

[mitchell]

I grow them from seed. Many garden supply places also carry them- the summer before rollover when we were still in California, I bought a whole flat at a large hardware store that had a nursery section, cheaper than at Walmart's nursery. Garlic chives seem to be a little harder to start, don't know why, but seed is widely available for both, even at the most ordinary display. Walmart carries them, for instance.

I think chives are one of the best "guerilla food plants" because they can inconspicuously be planted anywhere on or off your property.

 

[mitchell]

Thanks, for the info. They do have pretty flowers too don't they. I'll be getting me some. Found them in a nursey catalog that I had sitting here and had not looked before this post.

Thanks

 

[mitchell]

Vipper, if you can't find them , please let me know, and I can snail mail you seed......you want seeds I GOT SEEDS! I just don't know what kind they are, if I let them go to flower, they are pink flowers that smell strongly of onion.