Garlic Chives

Garlic Chives, Allium tuberosum, are one of my favourite plants. They tick several boxes: edible, attractive, easy to grow and a good bee plant.

You can buy seeds of this relative of chives, garlic, onions and leeks, plant them outside in the spring and have a row of plants by the end of the summer. This is what I did several years ago.

Once you have your Garlic Chives, you’re unlikely to need to sow their seeds again, as the plants are perennial and gradually increase in tidy clumps, which can be divided every few years to provide more stock. On the sandy soil of my allotment the plants also self sow themselves. The black seeds are relatively heavy and so new plants appear within a metre of the parent. The first sign of self seeding can be when you realise that the young shoots you thought were grass have a distinct scent of garlic.

Garlic Chives die back in winter and then start to shoot in spring. The leaves are strap-shaped, different in profile to the rounded, hollow leaves of normal Chives (Allium schoenoprasum). White star-shaped flowers are borne on stalks above the leaves in August and attract bees and sometimes butterflies.

You can use the leaves of Garlic Chives as a flavouring in the same way as ordinary Chives, but be aware that the flavour is more garlic than mild onion. The flowers are also edible and can be added to salads or nibbled straight from the plant. The taste is a mixture of sweetness and garlic, the garlic element lingering longer in the mouth.

Garlic Chives are a popular ingredient in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese cookery and are used in stir-fries, pancakes and soups. They are also known as Chinese Chives.