I wanted to share this “harvest trivia” fact about chives: garlic and regular.

During HerbFest I’ve noticed that when I talk about “cutting scallions” many people are surprised to learn that scallions should not be cut from the top but rather from the bottom of the base of the plant.

Let’s say you’re making a baked potato and you only need a pinch of chives, so you don’t want to cut the whole stem off, so you cut off the top to harvest only what you’re going to use. What you just did is kill the stem from where you cut to the ground, which is waste and also not good for the plant.

This is what you have to do…

• Cut from the base the number of stems you need.
• Now cut off the tops of the harvested stalks the amount you need tonight
• Chop them, but don’t chop the rest of the chives stem or release the oils which is what you’re looking for for flavor and fragrance.
• Take the remaining stems and put them in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer.
• The next time you need chives, remove the stems from the freezer and chop the ones that release the oil you had stored in the stem by not cutting them at the original harvest.

This process also encourages the spring onions to expand their base and you get more spring onions year after year.

It should also be remembered that chive flowers are edible flowers, but be careful eating chive flower with garlic hesitantly as it has more garlic than garlic itself!