How to grow chives: sow, plant or divide?

You don't sow chives. At least: I don't. Because if you buy 1 plant and put it in your Makkelijke Moestuin garden box, you'll have enough forever.

Mainly because you can hardly buy them as plants anywhere. But once you've successfully sown them, you'll enjoy them year after year, just like regular chives.

(As of March 2024, we sell Chinese chive seeds in the seed shop, and they're also in the app.)

Chives belong to the garlic family, just like onions, leeks, and garlic. The green leaves have a real oniony flavor.

You can cut off a chunk of the green leaves pretty often. They'll grow back quickly. So you'll always have fresh and tender chives.

If you let the stems grow out, they'll produce purple flowers: a bee favorite. The green leaves become less tasty, but the flowers are also edible.

The plant is hardy and will survive the winter. In the fall, everything green above ground dies, but the bulbs in the soil mix contain enough nutrients for the wintertime. You'll see fresh shoots in the spring:

A chive plant is actually a cluster of individual stemmed onions that you harvest the leaves from. Every year, new onions pop up. So the cluster gets bigger and bigger.

10 years ago, I bought 1 chive plant at the local garden center.

The next spring, it was so big, I could tear that plant into 4 separate plants. That was convenient because 4 clusters fit in 1 square patch.

The next year, the clumps had grown again. They were enough to divide into 4 pieces again. So I filled another patch with chives and gave the rest to my family.

In the years after that, the whole family and our circle of friends had plenty of chives. They ended up all over the garden, plus a few wound up on the compost heap.

We had more than enough chives.

So my first plant yielded 4 plants in the 2nd year. A year later, there were 16.
Let's say I kept up this rate for 8 years: 16 x 4 = 64, 64 x 4 = 256. 256 x 4 = 1024.

What!?? I would have had 4,194,304 chive plants by now.

Gulp.

The garden center sells 1 chive plant for 2.50 euros. That's what I'd call a steal.

Buy 1 chive plant and put it in your Makkelijke Moestuin garden box anytime between March and August.

Cut off a good chunk of the green regularly. It grows back fast, so you'll always have fresh and tender chives.

In the spring, take the whole plant out of your box and tear it into quarters.

Then, top off the garden box with some MM-Plantfood, mix all the soil mix together, and choose a patch to plant the chives in.

Do it again every year and you're set for life.

Sow them in pots in March, or directly in the garden box from April onward.

Once the seeds are available, they're also in the app, so you can see exactly what to do. Once they're plants, the rest is the same as with regular chives.

The plants spread a little less quickly, so it takes longer before you need to divide them. Usually only after about three years.

Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? You don't sow chives, you tear them.

Have fun!

PS: Do you also want to garden my way?

Then set up a real Makkelijke Moestuin: you'll be growing in no time: