🌱✗ Tested and false“Chives are an allium, so rotate them with your onions and garlic”
Chives are a perennial and do not follow annual rotation rules. They stay in the same spot for years, with no rotation recommendation needed. The rotation advice applies to annual alliums like onions and garlic.
What to do: Plant chives in a permanent spot and leave them there. Lift and divide the clump every three or four years to keep it healthy, replanting a division in the same place.
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- RHSPerennial herb; lift and divide clumps every few years; no rotation requirement stated
“Pick the flowers off chives: they are inedible and drain the plant”
Chive flowers are fully edible with a milder onion flavour than the leaves, and are used in salads and as a garnish. Removing them does encourage more leaf growth, but the flowers are a crop in their own right.
What to do: Pick chive flowers for the kitchen while they are fresh and the colour is deep purple. Leave a few for the bees, who work them heavily in late spring.
In Scotland: Chive flowers appear in May and June, when a Scottish garden has few other edible flowers. They are worth harvesting for that alone.
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- RHSPurple flowers are edible and attractive to bees
“You should lift and divide chives every year to keep them productive”
Chives benefit from division every three to four years, not annually. Dividing congested clumps in spring is the advice. Annual division disturbs a plant that is still performing perfectly well.
What to do: Divide chives in spring every three or four years, or when the centre of the clump stops producing. Cut the leaves back by half before lifting, and replant the outer sections as new plants.
In Scotland: Chives are one of the first herbs to appear in a Scottish spring, and heavy division in cold, wet soil sets them back at exactly the moment they should be powering ahead.
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- RHSLift and divide congested clumps every few years in spring
“Cut chives right to the ground and they grow back stronger”
Cutting chive leaves down to 2.5cm above soil level several times during the growing season is advised, to encourage fresh growth. The plant responds with a new flush of tender leaves.
What to do: Cut to about 2-3cm, not literally scalped to the soil. Do it two or three times through the growing season. After flowering, cut the whole clump back to rejuvenate it.
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- RHSCut down to 2.5cm several times during the season to encourage fresh growth
“Chives self-seed everywhere, and once you have them you'll never get rid of them”
Chives do self-seed freely and can become invasive if left to their own devices. The fix is simple and effective: remove the flower heads before they set seed.
What to do: Deadhead chives after flowering, before the seed heads dry and scatter. Lift and divide clumps every few years in spring to keep them vigorous, giving away or discarding the divisions you do not need.
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- RHSDeadhead after flowering to prevent self-seeding; can become invasive
