One section of my garden is turning white and humming with visitors. The garlic chives pollinators are holding their annual convention.

Years ago my father gave me a ten inch pot of garlic chives. He had several rows of it in his garden. He would cut off a row and feed it to his goats every week.

I knew what chives were, or so I thought. They were this kitchen herb used to flavor eggs and other such dishes. Except those are onion chives.

Garlic chives can be used as a kitchen herb much as the other is. The leaves of the garlic chives are flat and have a more peppery taste.

Potted plants and I don’t do well together. I tend to forget to water or overwater, both of which lead to dead plants. The garlic chives moved into the garden in a nice two foot square area.

In August the plants put up their flowering stalks and the garlic chives pollinators moved in. The flowers made seeds. The garlic chives spread and now cover an eight foot by ten foot area.

The flowers are in umbels or bouquets. The visitors include bees both native and honeybees, bumblebees of at least two kinds, four or more kinds of wasps, flies, beetles, several kinds of butterflies and an occasional hummingbird.

My garden never seems to lack pollinators. They enjoy the squash, peppers, tomatoes, okra and flowers. I enjoy the harvest.
But the bounty found by the garlic chives pollinators attracts many more kinds and numbers. They are so busy with the flowers I can walk along the paths around the patch to look at and photograph them.

Much as I like seeing the flowers and insects, my patch is large enough. After the flowers are done blooming, before the seeds are set, I will cut off the flower stalks for an arm’s length into the patch from all sides tossing the stalks into the patch. The new plants will fill in between the old ones and not spread further out.
Meet more Ozark insects in “Exploring the Ozark Hills.”