🌿 Chives 🌿

Chives

Botanical name: Allium schoenoprasum
Life cycle: Bulb-forming herbaceous perennial herb.
Native: Europe, Asia. Naturalized in North America.
Height: 12"
Bloom time: May to June. 

Description: 
Christopher Lloyd says, "they are eye-catching plants, well deserving a frontline position in any border and making the greatest display in May." 
Mild onion flavor. One of the famous fines herbes of French cuisine; said to stimulate the appetite and strengthen the stomach. 

The degree of difficulty: Easy. Described as a "gateway herb" as in one of the easiest to grow; which encourages us to grow more herbs. One of the first to be seen in the cool spring garden.

Uses: Classic for potato salad, omelets. Lloyd enjoys the young shoots on a thin sandwich filled with a mix of cream cheese and chives, salt & pepper.
Single florets of Chives are pretty and delicious when scattered in a green salad.
They are also an ingredient of the gräddfil sauce with the traditional herring dish served at Swedish midsummer celebrations.
Companion planting: Chives improve growth and flavor of carrots and tomatoes.

Chive seeds.

Culture: 
After the danger of frost is passed, plant seeds in furrows in the garden or broadcast them where the plants are to grow into typical Chive clumps. 
All members of the Allium family benefit from full sun and rich soil. 
Clumps will last c. five years and then should be lifted and reset. If clumps are cut back after flowering and then fertilized, new spears will come up in autumn.
When the ground freezes, they will go into dormancy to store up for new growth.
Likes fertile, well-drained soil. Harvesting leaves of the plant, if grown from seed, should be left alone until July, in the 1st year, to allow a good root system to develop.
If they are grown in pots, it is advised to keep them out of the hot sun. 

History: 

Chives are one of the most ancient of all herbs; the first record goes back 4,000 years to China, when Marco Polo reported to the West, his culinary appreciation of chives.
Chives are a cultivated crop in Holland, Germany, and China. Dutch farmers used to feed their cows chives to produce milk with a fresh flavor.

Favorite reference for this post on Chives. 
Willow Creek Press. 1997.

🌿 Lou's Summer Rose 🌿 2016

June on Shaw Island

Lou's Pink Rose and
Clematis Jackmanii (?)
Shaw Island heart thumps,
Anno 21 June 2016
Thanks for the note and happy trails
to the Browns from Portland, OR.

🌿 LOU'S LUNARIA annua & Frog Hunting 🌿

LOU'S LUNARIA seed pods ripening for 2017,
paired with Broken Point Juniper maritima
(Seaside Juniper)
With Glassybaby "Frog Hunting."
Anno eighteen June 2016.

Seaside Juniper (Juniper maritima) is a newly named species as of 2007, with botanists separating this species from Juniper scopulorum. 
      On the site, Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria, there is a list of recorded observations of this Juniper maritima on the following islands in our county: "Broken Point Island", Posey, Reef, Gossip, many of the the Sucia Island group, Turn, San Juan, Coon, Skull, Cliff, Nob, Oak, Fawn, Victim, McConnell and little McConnell. 
      No Juniper seeds for sale at this time.
      The Juniper sprigs used in the bouquet came from private property on Shaw Island. We are not on the herbarium index and we don't mind.