28F at dawn today. Is it possible that it’s getting colder instead of warmer? Spring’s been here for over two months (since March 20 at 1:46 AM eastern time) yet I just read something suggesting we were returning to winter in the next couple days. It might even snow. Well, even if it feels like winter, it is still spring. There was a year with “no summer” in 1816. In the eastern US, especially in Maine, it was a serious disaster. We aren’t there yet, even if it feels as if we haven’t gotten to spring yet, let alone summer.

Whether chives help in the orchard or not, chive flowers are beautiful, and the flowers and stems are delicious. Plant more chives!

Despite the cold, one of my favorite plants, chives (Allium schoenoprasum), is now in bloom. We have chives planted throughout the farm, including in the orchards - enough for a thousand baked potatoes. Companion literature says that chives deter or discourage aphids in the orchard. This may be because ants don’t like chives, and ants play an important role in the lives of aphids. I always see them together. Some claim that chives discourage applescab (Venturia inaequalis), the unsightly and damaging fungal disease, as a result of the high sulfur content of chives. Who needs chemical AG when it’s all right here in the plants? So much to research.