Gadenin日本語Get the appSeed is the only route
Chervil is an annual with a single taproot and no side shoots worth the name. There is nothing to divide, cuttings will not root, and a plant that has flowered dies. Every method that works on woody or clumping herbs is beside the point here. If you want more chervil you sow seed, and the only real question is where the seed comes from.
That makes seed saving unusually worthwhile. Bought chervil seed is often stale by the time it reaches you, whereas seed you shook off your own plant a few weeks earlier germinates thickly and fast. One plant allowed to flower produces far more seed than a household can use in a season.
- Do not try to divide a clump What looks like several plants growing together is usually several seedlings that came up close. Splitting them breaks every taproot involved and none of the pieces recovers.
- Do not try cuttings The hollow stems collapse rather than root. Any energy spent on this is better put into another short row of seed.
- Do not keep a plant going after it flowers Chervil is genuinely annual. Once it has set seed it dies, and cutting the flower heads off only delays the end by a week or two while the leaf gets worse.
Let two or three plants flower on purpose
When the spring row starts to bolt, resist the urge to clear the whole bed. Leave two or three of the strongest plants standing. They throw up branched stems eighteen to twenty four inches (45 to 60 cm) tall carrying flat white umbels, which feed hoverflies and parasitic wasps for weeks and then ripen into seed.
Choose the plants that flowered last rather than first. Chervil bolts readily, so if you always save from whatever happens to be standing at the end you are quietly selecting for plants that hold in leaf longer in your own conditions. Over a few seasons that makes a noticeable difference.
- Mark the plants you are keeping Push a cane in beside them before you clear the rest of the row, or you will pull them by accident on the next tidy up.
- Leave them where they are A flowering chervil cannot be moved any more than a seedling can. Plan the row so the seed plants sit at one end and are not in the way of the next sowing.
- Stake them if the site is windy The stems are hollow and top heavy once the seed sets. A flattened plant sheds its seed into the mud and you lose the crop.
The flowers are white and flat topped, held on branching stems. They are among the better insect plants in a kitchen garden, so there is a reason to leave one flowering even if you have no interest in the seed.
Collecting and storing the seed
The seed is long, thin and dark, about a quarter of an inch (6 mm), and it ripens unevenly over two or three weeks. Ripe seed drops the moment it is touched, so timing matters. Watch the umbels and collect when the first seeds have turned from green to dark brown and the earliest are already falling.
The critical part is storage, not collection. Chervil seed loses viability faster than almost any other kitchen garden seed. Kept cool, dark and properly dry it is good for a season and usable at reduced rates for a second. Kept in a warm room it can be dead within a year, which is the single most common reason a sowing fails.
| Stage | What to do | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Watching the heads | Check every couple of days once the flowers fade | 2 to 3 weeks after flowering |
| Collecting | Cut whole stems into a paper bag, heads first | When the first seeds turn dark and shed |
| Finishing off | Hang the bag somewhere dry and airy for two weeks | Until the stems are brittle |
| Cleaning | Shake the bag, then winnow the chaff off | Once dry |
| Storing | Paper envelope in a sealed jar, cool and dark | Sow within a year |
Write the year on the envelope before you put it away. With most seed the date is a nicety; with chervil it is the difference between a row that comes up and a row that does not.
Letting a patch self sow
The easiest chervil in the garden is the chervil you did not sow. Left alone, a flowering plant scatters seed around itself and the seedlings appear where and when conditions suit them, usually in cooling weather. Those volunteers are better rooted and often stand longer than anything you sow deliberately, because they germinated in exactly the spot they chose.
Give it a corner in light shade under a shrub or along a shaded path edge and let it run. Weed around the seedlings rather than through them, and thin the thickest patches with scissors. A self sowing patch, once established, feeds you every cool season for years without any further sowing.
- Do not disturb the soil where the seed fell Hoeing or forking the ground after seed drop buries the seed too deep to germinate. Leave the surface alone until the seedlings appear.
- Thin volunteers as you would a sown row Take them to six to nine inches (15 to 23 cm) apart. A dense mat of seedlings gives small plants that bolt together and are hard to cut.
- Learn what the seedling looks like The first true leaves are finely divided and smell of anise if you rub one. Knowing the seedling on sight stops you hoeing off next season's crop by mistake.
Record the spot where volunteers appear and the week you first see them. That date is the plant telling you when your own conditions are right for germination, and it is a better guide to sowing time than any general calendar.