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From the Archives
Traditional Wisdom About Chives
Continuing on from last week’s post about lavender, let’s look at another herb. Chives are one of those herbs that I will always grow in my garden. I grow both regular chives and garlic chives (which, incidentally, spread everywhere if you don’t deadhead the before they set seed. We find garlic chives in the most interesting places around our garden…) The garlic chives were planted by the former owner, and they’re still thriving. The clumps of regular chives I’m growing came from our city’s annual perennial plant exchange.
We use chives in salad dressings, on eggs, as toppings for baked potatoes and chili. I snip the flowers to make chive blossom vinegar (I’ll post about that another time!) and the bees absolutely love both garlic and regular chives when they are in bloom. Besides all of this, chives are really easy to grow if given full sun to part shade and average soil.
So, because I like growing (and eating) chives so much, it was fun to learn a little bit of the traditional herbal wisdom behind them. A few tidbits:
If you really want to succeed at growing chives, steal them. Dishonestly-obtained chives will thrive in any garden.
In many parts of Germany, a garden in which chives flourish is said to be the garden of a mean and stingy woman.
Also from Germany: if the chives in the garden start to grow wrong, or grow weakly, it means the head of the household will soon die.
In Romania, people used to hang dried bunches of chives throughout the house to drive away evil spirits and diseases.
5 comments
5 comments to “Traditional Wisdom About Chives”
joey, February 1st, 2010 at 11:28 am:
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One of my favorites that no garden should be without! Happy February, Colleen
MrBrownThumb, February 2nd, 2010 at 2:55 pm:
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“If you really want to succeed at growing chives, steal them. Dishonestly-obtained chives will thrive in any garden.”
Ha! I didn’t know this but I’m glad to read it now. I stole seeds last year so I could plant them this year.
Colleen Vanderlinden, February 3rd, 2010 at 8:30 pm:
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Joey — Mine too! Happy February to you, too!
MBT — Well, then yours should grow really well. You’ll have to let me know if it’s true
Rhonda, February 4th, 2010 at 1:47 pm:
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I once bargained for a flat of chives at the end of the season, 36 plants for $1. It was a steal…now I know why they grew so well.
Colleen Vanderlinden, February 4th, 2010 at 1:53 pm:
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Nice to hear that it works
Thanks for stopping by!