Break up a head of garlic. Plant each clove, blunt end down, in some nice soil. Water. Put in sunny spot. Wait.I was Curious, so I dug up one of my cloves to see what was happening. It was very exciting. There were lots of fat white roots. The original clove had turned to mush around a small, firm new, pale-purple-skinned bulb. So I tucked it back carefully to get bigger.
The chives, allium cousins, are a riot. The flowers, broken up, are very good in a strongly flavoured salad. Think dried apricots, goats' cheese, garlic-rubbed croutons...They are incredibly oniony. I let these make flowers and am snipping for kitchen use from the two sterile chives I bought from Jim Glover. Sterile or not they also make flowers, but I've cut them off so all their juice goes into the leaves.
Why don't my chives flower like that? I eat them ? I remember chives flowering like that in a public garden in Washington DC
ReplyDeleteHello Hen! xxx
ReplyDeleteI think it might be because these here chives go through such a hard winter, quite dormant, and then can't wait to get out and make more chives. I have seen flowers on your chives, as I remember sifting through the hard stalks once when I cut a bunch this last summer. But perhaps the long wet winter makes them feel less excited. Also..sun? Maybe they want more sun...
Chicken.
Okay, I'm going to have to try this garlic thing.
ReplyDeleteI miss the abundant flowering chives we had in Brooklyn. I tried unsuccessfully to grow them in a pot here last year, and though the neighborhood is full of volunteer chives, none of them are flowering.