It’s been about five days since I planted garlic chive, pepper, and tomato seeds in some indoor planters. Today the first signs of life started showing up in the garlic chive pot.
If the little green bits look small in that photo, try the macro view on for size.
Yeah, good luck finding them at all.
Still, I count at least four little green guys in there so far, and I’m hopeful that the pot will be bursting with garlic chives soon. I’ve also got a few planted in smaller pots that might be easier to transplant outdoors once the weather is consistently warmer — but if it turns out I can get enough sunlight in my office I may try growing some indoors year round.
You don’t find garlic chives at the supermarket very often, but they taste like a cross between a green onion or scallion and garlic. That’s not surprising since garlic and onions are in the same family, and I’ve been meaning to grow some of these little guys since I first learned of their existence a few years ago.
But I hadn’t ever actually tasted one until this week. The Farm To City organization in Philadelphia manages a buying club called Winter Harvest that lets you order food from local farms throughout the colder months of the year.
For most of the winter we get a lot of apples, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and other hardy fruits and vegetables that are harvested in the fall and kept through the winter, as well as spinach which can be grown in cool temperatures, given the right conditions.
As springtime approaches, farmer start to add some new items to the mix, including leafy greens such as bok choy and bekana, and scallions and chives. I managed to snag a few garlic scallions before they were sold out, and picked them up last weekend. They didn’t spend much time in the fridge before ending up in the frying pan — although I sampled a few raw, because they’re just good.
I’m looking forward to trying some of their home grown cousins in a few months.
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