Walk past a garden border and you might spot them – slender green spikes that look a bit like grass until you look closer. Chives are easy to overlook, yet these modest onion family members have been quietly useful in gardens and kitchens for centuries. They’re the perfect starter herb for beginners, while still earning their keep in the gardens of green-thumbed experts.

Botanically speaking, chives (Allium schoenoprasum) are related to onions, garlic, leeks, and scallions in the Amaryllidaceae family. “Allium” comes from the Latin for garlic, while “schoenoprasum” combines Greek words for “rush” and “leek” – basically “reed-like leek,” which makes sense when you see them growing.

Unlike their stronger-flavored cousins, chives won’t make you cry or leave your breath reeking. They have hollow, tubular leaves that grow 10-15 inches tall in dense clumps. Around early summer, they send up slightly taller stalks with round purple flower heads. These pom-pom blooms are both exceedingly pretty and edible, with a stronger onion punch than the leaves. Bees love them as well.

Where Chives Came From 

Chives don’t have the dramatic history of some herbs (nobody started wars over chives), but they’ve been useful kitchen companions across the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. They grow wild in Europe, Asia, and North America, often in damp meadows and near streams.

The Romans probably brought cultivated chives to Britain, using them for cooking and medicine. Marco Polo mentioned finding them widely used across China during his travels. He apparently brought some Asian varieties back to Europe, though probably not with the fanfare of his other discoveries.

Medieval monks grew chives in their gardens, valuing them both as food flavoring and medicine. Hildegard of Bingen, a pretty remarkable 12th-century abbess and herbalist, wrote that chives helped digestion and circulation – uses that modern research hasn’t completely dismissed.

One strange bit of history comes from Romania, where they were hung in houses alongside garlic to ward off vampires. More practically, Dutch dairy farmers noticed that cows grazing on pastures with wild chives produced better-tasting milk, so they started deliberately planting them in their fields.

In Swedish folk medicine, bunches of chives were hung around homes during illness, supposedly to prevent disease from spreading. Seems odd now, but the antimicrobial compounds in alliums might actually have helped a bit in crowded living conditions.

Where Chives Like to Grow

Chives are remarkably low-maintenance plants that thrive across much of the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike fussier Mediterranean herbs that need hot, dry conditions, chives handle cool weather and cold winters without complaint. They’re often among the first herbs to pop up in spring, sometimes even pushing through late snow.

They grow best in fairly rich, well-drained soil that stays consistently moist but not waterlogged. Full sun works in cooler climates, but they appreciate afternoon shade in hotter regions. Once established, they’re surprisingly drought-tolerant, though they’ll look prettier with regular water.

Most commercial chives come from China, Japan, and parts of Europe, but they’re more commonly grown in home gardens than as major agricultural crops. Their short shelf life after cutting means locally-grown chives are usually best for cooking.

What makes chives particularly good for home gardens is their perennial nature and compact growth habit. A single planting can produce harvests for many years, slowly expanding into larger clumps that can be divided and replanted. They don’t take up much space and work well in containers, too.

Chives’ Medicinal Uses

Chives might not be medical powerhouses like garlic, but they pack surprising benefits into those slender leaves:

• They’re rich in vitamins A, K, and C, plus folate, calcium and potassium – not bad for something that’s mostly water and barely any calories.
• Like other alliums, chives contain sulfur compounds that seem to help immune function and fight inflammation. These compounds give chives their distinctive smell and mild antibacterial properties.
• The vitamin K in chives helps with proper blood clotting and maintaining healthy bones. Even a tablespoon of chopped chives contributes meaningfully to daily vitamin K needs.
• Traditional herbalists used chives to aid digestion, probably because they gently stimulate digestive enzymes without causing the discomfort stronger onions might.
• Some folk remedies recommended chives for better sleep. Modern herbalists sometimes suggest them as a mild natural sedative when included in evening meals.
• The vitamin A and antioxidants in chives contribute to eye health, potentially offering some protection against age-related vision problems.

In Russia, mothers would hang bunches of chives over a sick child’s bed to help with colds and respiratory infections. While this might sound like pure superstition, the volatile compounds released might have helped clear congestion somewhat, like a very mild natural vapor rub.

Strange Beliefs About Chives

Though less myth-laden than some herbs, chives have collected their fair share of folk beliefs and superstitions.

In parts of Eastern Europe, people planted chives on graves to keep evil spirits away from the deceased. More likely, the smell deterred scavenging animals, but the spiritual protection story probably sounded better.

Chinese tradition held that giving someone chives as a gift symbolized long life and endurance – logical when you consider how stubbornly perennial these plants are. They come back year after year without much fuss.

European farmers sometimes hung bunches of chives in cow stalls when animals were sick. While they explained this as driving away evil spirits causing illness, the strong smell might have actually helped repel certain insects or parasites.

One particularly odd belief from Eastern Europe warned that pregnant women shouldn’t cut chives because it could cause their baby to be born with a cleft palate. This superstition probably arose because chive leaves themselves are hollow and split – a classic case of sympathetic magic where like supposedly affects like.

Swiss Alpine shepherds sometimes decorated their lead cow with a garland including chives during the ceremonial autumn descent from mountain pastures. This celebrated the herbs that had supposedly improved their milk throughout the summer grazing season.

Tips for Growing Chives 

For beginning gardeners, chives are about as fool-proof as herbs get. Here’s how to succeed with minimal effort:

Start with seeds, divisions, or small plants from a garden center. Seeds need to be started indoors about 8-10 weeks before the last frost, then transplanted outside once established. Divisions from existing plants establish quickly and give you harvestable leaves much faster.

Plant them in soil with some compost mixed in, spacing plants about 6-12 inches apart. Water regularly until established. They like consistent moisture but won’t immediately die if you forget to water occasionally.

Don’t overfertilize – too much nitrogen makes for floppy, weak growth. A light application of balanced fertilizer in spring is plenty.

Harvest by cutting leaves about 2 inches above the soil line using scissors. This encourages fresh growth and prevents woody stems. Regular cutting keeps plants productive, but avoid taking more than a third of a plant at once.

Every 3-4 years, divide established clumps in early spring or fall. This rejuvenates the plants, prevents overcrowding, and gives you more chives to plant elsewhere or share with neighbors.

Consider growing both regular chives and garlic chives (Allium tuberosum). The latter have flat leaves instead of round ones, a mild garlic flavor, and pretty white flowers that bloom later in summer than regular chives do.

More Than Just Garnish

Beyond sprinkling them on potatoes, this herb has several practical uses:

• Plant them near roses, carrots, tomatoes, or fruit trees to help deter certain pests. Their oniony scent confuses insects that find plants by smell, and their flowers attract pollinators and beneficial insects.
• Use them as border plants along garden paths or the edges of beds. They stay tidy, won’t spread aggressively, and their purple flowers add nice color. Plus, they’re right there when you need a handful for the kitchen.
• Make a natural pest spray by steeping chopped chives in water for 24 hours, then straining and spraying on plants troubled by aphids and other soft-bodied insects.
• Cut the flowers for small bouquets. They last several days in water and look like little purple puffballs among other flowers. Some people even like their subtle oniony scent indoors.
• Create pale lavender-pink dyes for wool or silk using chive flowers. The color isn’t particularly colorfast without proper mordants, but it’s an interesting natural dyeing experiment.

Quietly Useful

Nothing about chives screams for attention. They’re not flashy, exotic, or trendy. But their steady presence in gardens across the Northern Hemisphere speaks to their genuine usefulness.

What makes chives worth growing? They don’t need coddling or special treatment. They grow happily in average soil with moderate water. They survive winter freezes that kill other herbs. They deter some garden pests while attracting beneficial insects. And they provide fresh flavor for most of the growing season, often starting earlier than other herbs in spring.

These modest plants connect modern gardeners to centuries of herbal tradition while requiring almost no special knowledge to grow successfully. Sometimes the most valuable additions to our gardens aren’t the showiest or most exotic, but the quietly reliable ones that simply do their jobs without demanding much in return.