Allium Tuberosum (garlic chives, Chinese chives) are flowering. Bees are happy.
While I use these chives extensively in cookery for a subtle garlic flavour in pancakes, salads, as a garnish, or in vegan cheese spreads, they are often regarded as an ornamental in the USA.
The bright white, sweetly perfumed, flowers (the garlic taste/smell is in the stems and leaves) are certainly really pretty in borders in the hot late summer. They also have a reputation for discouraging mosquitoes in a garden. Jury is still out on success of that one in my monsoon humid, August mosquito and gnatty garden.
Obviously the bees didn’t get that memo as they are all over the blooms In the early morning these days
I have a few potted seedlings which I am thinking are robust enough to offer at the farmer’s market this week. Nothing wrong with spreading flowers for the bees throughout the community.
In late spring of this year, I sold nine little starter pots of these chives, created by the seasonal division of my original clump, which has been traveling a few years with me now. Up hill and down dale, I’ve carried chives in a pot, until now they are seeding progeny to take root in a food forest on little piece northern Chihuahuan desert.
Allium Tuberosum are also important medicine plants with a long history of use in various herbal medicine traditions, including TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), with antibacterial, digestive and kidney tonic properties. They are definitely a herbal relative to invite into in a food forest. More info on all aspects of this plant helper from the Plants For A Future website here
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