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Home » Herbs » Chives » Garlic Chives

Garlic Chives

Garlic chives are a perennial herb with a very mild garlic flavour.There will be about 3 to 8 blades per plant, with each blade being about  ¾ cm wide (⅓ inch) and up to 30 cm tall (12 inches). The blades are flat rather than rounded, as those for other chives are, though there is one sub-variety (Flowering Chinese Chives) that has rounded.

The stalks grow up to 75 cm (30 inches) tall. The stalks produce greenish-white self-fertile blossoms about 2 to 3 cm (1 inch) wide in the summer (whereas regular chives flower earlier, in the spring.) The plant doesn’t die back in summer.

The plant can be propagated through seed or by dividing clumps of it. It will also self-seed.

The flowers are edible. They can be dried and ground to be used as a spice. The seeds produced by the flowers can be sprinkled on food.

The plant produces a small bulb underground that is edible, but it is tough. If you are harvesting garlic chives for their bulbs, do so before the flowers open.

The plant is sometimes blanched while growing to produce white or yellow blades, which are softer.

When harvesting, cut leaves at ground level. Older leaves are not as nice as young ones; they are coarser.

Storage Hints

Store harvested blades in a plastic bag in the fridge and use up within 1 week.

Language Notes

When blanched, the Chinese call them “Gau Wong”.

Other names

AKA: Chinese Chives, Flat Chives, Nira Grass
Scientific Name: Allium tuberosum "Garlic Chives"
Japanese: Nira
Chinese: Gau choy, Gow choy, Ku chai

This page first published: Jun 27, 2004 · Updated: Jun 14, 2018.

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