Chives - a perennial plant that can be grown for food, or can be used to decorate a garden. It contains vitamin C, carbohydrates, carotene, proteins, sugars, volatile. This is a valuable dietary product used as an anthelmintic and atherosclerotic agent.
People call it bow-speed (soon to be born) and chives (feather cut off). During flowering, the plant is very decorative, as it has beautiful red-violet inflorescences and dense foliage. Chives have thin feather leaves and small bulbs. It tastes much more tender than other onion varieties.
For planting this wonderful plant, it is advisable to choose a site with fertile loose soil. It is undesirable to plant it next to beans, peas, cabbage. Places with sandy soil that does not retain moisture do not suit him, he does not tolerate drought. Chives need regular watering throughout the growing season.
Seeds can be sown before winter, in February for seedlings or in May directly into the ground. It is preferable to sow fresh seeds, germination of the old is not guaranteed. Depth of embedding is 1.0-1.5 cm. Seeds are placed in holes, in each piece 10-15. The distance between adjacent holes in a row of 25 cm, between rows of 30 cm. It is advisable to seedlings or thin out, as the onion grows well, and in tightness growth worsens.
When growing from seeds in the first year, a bush forms a small, only 3-4 outgrowths. The next year it will grow stronger, the shoots will be about 20. Chives can be grown in one place for 4-5 years. In the future, it must be divided and put in another place.
In old curtains, the feather grows smaller, grows worse and quickly withers. The division is preferably carried out in spring, at the beginning of leaf regrowth, or in autumn. If you divide in the fall, the feathers must be trimmed, leaving 6-7 cm. In each divide, it is desirable to leave about 10 processes with bulbous thickening and roots.
It is better to eat young feathers that have reached a length of 20 cm in food. When the feathers grow back more than 25 cm, they become somewhat tougher. In place of the cut off after about 10 days, new ones grow. Chives are famous for the speed of building green mass. Growing it in the beds in the spring and summer and in pots on the windowsill in the winter, you can eat fresh healthy greens all year round.
If the onion is grown on a feather, then the emerging inflorescences must be removed. In a flowering plant, feathers are not suitable for food, too stiff. To constantly have green onions for food, you need to regularly cut off some of the feathers.
If you need to get seeds, then the inflorescences can be left on some plants. When the testes turn brown (this happens June-July), they need to be cut, dried on paper, threshed and ventilated.
Before frosts, all feathers of onions are best cut off. In this case, in the spring it will begin to grow faster.
Growing this culture, we must not forget about weeding, cultivation, regular watering and top dressing.
Can be grown as an ornamental chives. Photo well demonstrates its attractiveness for landscape design. He is especially beautiful during flowering. It goes well with low plants, such as daisies, primroses, pansies, etc. Scots onion curbs are interesting, given that it can be trimmed.
