How to Grow Chives from Seed: Slow Germination and Multi-Sown Clumps

Slow germination is normal, not failure

Chive seed takes fourteen to twenty-one days at 60 to 70F (15 to 21C), and every seedling comes up as a single thread bent into a loop, like a hairpin pushing out of the soil. That loop straightens over a few days into the first hollow leaf. Gardeners who are used to lettuce or radish give up on chives at day ten and re-sow on top of seed that was about to appear.

The seed is also short lived. Chive seed loses viability quickly and a packet more than two years old germinates thinly and unevenly. If a sowing comes up in scattered patches with bare gaps, suspect the age of the seed before you blame the soil temperature.

1. Keep the surface damp for three weeks The seed needs continuous moisture over a long germination window. One dry afternoon at day eight kills seed that has already swollen. Cover the tray with a sheet of glass or a propagator lid until you see the first loops.
2. Do not re-sow too early Wait a full three weeks before writing a sowing off. If you scatter fresh seed over the old, the two ages come up a fortnight apart and the later seedlings never catch the first.
3. Use fresh seed Buy seed for the season you are sowing, and keep any leftovers cool and dry in a sealed jar. Chive seed stored in a warm shed is often dead within a year.

Seedlings emerging as a bent loop with the seed coat still stuck on the tip is normal. Do not pull the coat off; it drops away on its own once the leaf straightens.

Sow in clusters, never one seed per cell

A single chive seedling is a single thread, and one thread is not a plant you can do anything with. Chives grow and are harvested as a clump, so the whole point of raising them from seed is to get eight to twelve seedlings occupying the same space from the start. This is what growers mean by multi-sowing.

Drop eight to twelve seeds into each cell or module and plant the whole cluster out as one unit without ever separating it. The seedlings share the cell, thicken together, and by the end of the first season you have a clump the width of your palm instead of a dozen isolated hairs that get shaded out by anything nearby.

1. Ten seeds per module Use a two inch (5 cm) module or a three inch (8 cm) pot and count roughly ten seeds into it. Cover with a quarter inch (5 mm) of sifted compost and firm gently so every seed touches damp soil.
2. Never thin the cluster Thinning defeats the purpose. Let all of them grow. Crowded chive seedlings do not compete each other to death the way lettuce does; they simply form the clump you want.
3. Plant out at four to five inches tall When the cluster is four to five inches (10 to 13 cm) tall and the roots hold the module together, plant the whole plug without disturbing it. Set it so the white bases sit just below the soil surface.
4. Space clusters eight inches apart Allow eight to ten inches (20 to 25 cm) between clusters. Each one will spread to that width within two seasons, and closer than that they run into each other and the middles go weak.

Sowing direct in the ground works, but chive seedlings are so fine that weed seedlings outgrow them. Modules give you a clump that can be planted into clean ground already established.

Depth, temperature and timing

Chive seed needs darkness and warmth but not much of either. A quarter inch (5 mm) of covering is enough; bury it an inch down and the thin shoot exhausts itself before it reaches light. Germination is best at 60 to 70F (15 to 21C), which in practice means a windowsill or a covered frame in early spring rather than cold open ground.

Chives are hardy perennials, so the sowing window is generous. Early spring under cover, or late summer for clumps that establish before winter and take off the following spring.

The first year builds the clump, it does not feed you

A first-year chive plant raised from seed is thin, and every leaf it carries is what it uses to build the small underground bulbs that carry it through winter. Cut it hard in its first summer and it goes into dormancy with almost nothing stored, then comes back the following spring even weaker than it went in.

Take only what you actually need in year one, a few leaves at a time from the outside of the clump, and leave at least two thirds standing. From the second spring the clump is dense enough to cut whole, which is the way chives are properly harvested, and it will carry that for years.

1. Remove flowers in the first year If a first-year clump throws flower buds, pinch them out at the base. Setting seed in the first season diverts everything into seed and leaves the clump smaller going into winter.
2. Keep it weeded Chive foliage casts almost no shade, so weeds smother a young clump faster than they would a leafy crop. Hand weed close to the clump rather than hoeing, which slices the shallow bulbs.
3. Feed lightly in late summer A liquid feed once or twice in late summer helps the first-year clump build reserves. Skip heavy nitrogen, which produces soft growth that rots at the base over a wet winter.

Autumn sowing and volunteers

Chives self-seed readily if you let the flowers dry on the plant, and the seedlings that appear around an established clump the following spring are free plants. They germinate in cool, damp conditions without any help, which tells you that an autumn sowing outdoors works: sow in late summer or early autumn, let the clusters establish, and they come through winter and grow away early.

The catch is that volunteers appear wherever the seed lands, which is often the middle of a path or under a shrub. Lift them at the hairpin stage with a teaspoon, group six or eight of them into a pot, and grow them on as a deliberate cluster instead of leaving them to become a weed problem.

If you do not want self-sown chives everywhere, cut the flower heads off as the color fades and before the heads turn papery. That is the point at which the seed becomes viable.

What to write down in the first season

Chives live for years, so the notes you make in the first season are worth more than they are for an annual. Record the sowing date and the date the first loops appeared, because the gap between them tells you next time whether a slow sowing is normal or whether your seed was too old. Note how many seeds went into each module and how wide the clump was by the end of the season.

Also mark where each clump is planted, on a sketch or by counting from a fixed point. Chives vanish completely over winter and it is easy to fork through a dormant clump in early spring believing the ground is empty. A note of the position saves the plant, and a note of the planting year tells you when the clump is due for division.