Advice on chives please.

[cheops]

`Never grew chives before but I've been given a pot of chives. They are in a tight bunch, some are flowering and some are past flowering. They don't look great - can I ressurect them by cutting them and if so how far down should I crop them? Will they come up again nice and fresh. Also I feel they are overcrowded or is that ok with chives. Thanks for your anticipated advice.

[veggiechicken]

Split them into small clumps and plant them out, with some space for expansion. Either cut the flower heads off or let them set seed. The clumps should die back over winter and grow back stronger in spring. You can snip off some of the better leaves to use now but leave the bases intact.

[Penellype]

I find chives are rather prone to rust and can start to die down shortly after flowering. If they do this you can cut them off really quite low down and they will grow again. They might even give you more flowers. The new shoots are nicer to eat than the older ones which can be a bit stringy, so I tend to cut mine down after flowering anyway.

[Bren In Pots]

I've got several clumps of chives oddly those that do the best were self-sown in a old stone sink that only has 2 inch of soil/compost.

[Jay-ell]

Chives naturally grow in a tight bunch as each chive splits and multiplies from it's bulb. This can restrict the growth as only the outside chives have much room for expansion so if you want the small clump to become bigger you need to split it up to give more chives room to grow and split.

This hedge started off 2 years ago as a single clump. Each chive was split off and planted by itself about 1 or 2 inches from it's nearest neighbour. each then grew into a little clump which was then transplanted and split to form the hedge.It's now about 10 foot long by 1 foot wide (ok, not everyone wants 10 foot of chives but for a brief period in the year it looks fantastic and is loved by the bees)



Once flowered it'll have a haircut (which gives a lot of chives which are a bit stringy so I compost them) and then a new round of growth. Once they start regrowing they'll look a bit manky as the dried remains of the old leaves will dominate but they soon revive with new green growth.

[Jimmy]

Nice on a bagel with cream cheese.
Got some garlic chives which are growing. But they look wishy washy and don't look anything like chives ?
Jimmy

[Jay-ell]

Garlic chives are a different species and have a flat leaf rather than the tubular leaves of chives. Again lovely bee attracting flowers. I'm trying to grow another hedge of these in the orchard opposite the one I posted above.

[cheops]

Thanks everyone. I think I'll cut them low down and split the bunch next spring. A special mention to Jay-ell --that 'chive hedge' looks fantastic. You have inspired me to copy that. I'm always planting and growing with bees in mind and that's hedge of yours sure is a little bit of heaven for the bees. When I brought the pot home and laid it down on the decking within seconds a bee appeared and landed on one of the chive flowers.