Put more chives in your life

Earlier I made a posting about growing chives, sharing my enthusiasm for this herb and making the realization on how easy it is to cultivate it. After making my huge harvest that would end up in the freezer for long term use, I had read up more on the science of growing chives and learned a few things.

First and foremost, chives reproduce in two ways:

1. Bulb division
2. Seed propagation

It takes the germination of new seedlings to reach maturity in 2 years, but bulb division happens over the course of a growing season when there's enough room in the soil. So, breaking up a chive plant every few years is a trouble-free and easy way to manage your chive crop. With seeds, you have to do the whole germination thing and separately nurture the seedlings for about 2 years, which can be a bit of a bother. And is it really necessary?  I left my pot of chives going for several years before stepping up to divide the bulb clusters. Frankly, with the single pot I was getting enough chives to keep me from having to buy them in the store. But now that I've learned more good things about chives, I'm going to be eating them more often and will need to have a larger crop!

I'd read that you should chop off all of the chive leaves at about 2-4" above the base prior to breaking up the bulbs. I decided to just thin it out a bit but leave a lot of longer leaves in place. It was just a guess, but I figured the long chive leaves will give a good boost of photosynthesis, or sacrifice themselves to transfer nutrients back into the bulbs.

When the soil becomes crowded with chive bulbs, the plant will resist dividing and just keep growing roots. Extracting my chive plant from the pot, I found a large group of small bulbs with a literal "mop" of roots all swirled around at the bottom. This particular pot has a peculiar drainage mechanism--rather than holes all along the bottom, there's a small 2" shaft in the center with a hole in the top of it. This allows about a 2" layer of water to gather at the bottom, where any more than that will drain out of the center shaft. I guess this works well for the chives, because the roots were not rotten in any way.

SO,,,

The bulbs were numerous and rather small, but I was able to carefully break them up while retaining a good portion of the roots. Because they were all so terribly intertwined, quite a number of roots were severed in order to separate the bulbs. This had me worried, as I expected the significant cut in the ability to uptake water might kill off a number of the bulbs. Nevertheless, the deed was done and the bulbs were extracted.

I had one large grouping of about a dozen bulbs, and a few smaller groupings that managed to separate from the main cluster. I put the largest cluster back into the original pot with lots of fresh medium and fertilizer. I had a few single chive bulb remnants left behind and decided to poke a few holes in the soil to see if they might manage to survive the separation. Next, I transplanted the smaller clusters into two other pots--one small, one medium. 

The next day, the long chive leaves were all rather droopy. This was not looking good. They weren't as bad as cut chives left on a table, but were definitely suffering from water loss. I made sure to keep the soil most. I went away for the weekend and then came back, to find the chives were springing back with vigor. All three pots were showing leaf resilience, a notable number of them standing up among the others that were still limp. This was very encouraging and a real testament to the heartiness of chives. What roots they had to work with must have sprung forth to help sop up moisture for the leaves.

Smallest of the chive transplants

Medium sized chive potting, with about 5-6 bulbs

The BIG one -- the primary cluster plus a few single and small groupings

The large pot has quite a bit less dense of a chive population than it was originally. The bulb cluster was pushed up against the wall of the pot, with the leaves overhanging the other half. I had put some chive seeds in the "vacant lot" of the other side last spring as an experiment, but had to tie back the leaves of the main cluster in order for the sun to reach them (you can see the taped plastic on the side). The little chive sprouts were struggling in that pot, not only because of the light challenges, but also due to competition with the roots of the other plant. I transplanted them into their own pot and hopefully they'll have better luck with vigorous growth:

Chive seedlings

The "bulbs" of these stalks are barely visible. From what I've read, it'll take a good 18-24 months before they reach a mature size. This was my first time trying to grow any seeds without germination pods. I just lightly buried them in the large chive pot and watered periodically, until about a month later when they started to push through the soil. It'll be interesting to see how they do over the winter. I won't let them rest (like the main plant) and will feed them fertilizer to stimulate growth to help shorten the time to maturity. As I said earlier this isn't the convenient way to increase your chive population (better to split up bulbs to give them more room for further dividing), but I want to experience it for myself.

So I'm going to have a lot of chives, that's for certain. I've read up on this herb and it's one of the most nutritious. It is very low in cholesterol and sodium, and also a good source of Thiamin, Niacin, Phosphorus and Zinc, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Copper and Manganese. The percentage Daily Value of Vitamin A and C are 3% for 3 grams, which is a terrific ratio. They also have good antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties.

Relatively speaking, chives are a weaker kind of garlic in terms of health benefits. Of course, with flavoring you'll probably not think to put more than a teaspoonful of them but given their potential I'd say it's time to do a tablespoonful or more. So... try to smother your food with those chives!