Health News and Information

You can use chives on or in almost every savoury dish. When I serve out the meal each evening, my last stop before the dining-table is always the chives or parsley bed. Just chop up a few leaves and sprinkle on. If your spouse or your family objects to the aroma, chew a few parsley sprigs after eating chives. This will remove the after-effects. A few drops of aniseed oil on the tongue will do the same thing.

If you are a percolated-coffee drinker, tip the grounds on the chives bed. They seem to relish them. Well-fed soil is essential for chives, for the plants take nitrogen and potassium out of the ground. Grow comfrey near by if possible, and you will have huge, healthy chive plants. (Comfrey roots are a rich source of nitrogen in readily available form.) Yellowing of the tips of the spear-shaped leaves means the chives are underfed, and are crying out for nutriment.

Garlic Chives are a little different. Their leaves are strap-shaped, and they have a white, starry head of flowers. Their flavour is of true garlic, but in a much milder form. Again, use them raw”, in salads, sauces and all savoury dishes. They have good antiseptic properties, and help to check the spread of contagious diseases when on the breath. Like garlic itself, they have a deterrent action on the T.B. bacillus, but are not harmful or injurious to the body in any way.

Garlic chives and roses seem to be companion plants. As well as increasing the perfume of the roses, the chives have a repellent effect on certain insects, notably aphis and when they are planted amongst roses the incidence of disease seems to be considerably less. One large rose nursery I know now gives plants of garlic chives with each order.

Use the herb freely; you cannot have too much of it. Use it wherever onion taste is required if this is too strong for you.

Chives can be quick-frozen very successfully if you need them right through the year; but, of course, some of their health-giving properties are lost in so doing. They can also be dried on screens, but tend to go yellow and lose their appetizing colour. Fresh chives grow so abundantly that you should have plenty for one household with only several plants.

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