My row of lovely flowering chives is now looking a bit tired and faded. If I cut the flowers off will they grow new ones again this season?
I think I read somewhere the taste is better if you don't let them flower but I adore these flowers and you get to use the chive as well!
Thanks
Karen
They may flower again, if we have a couple of wet weeks to make good growth and then a hot dry spell to make them think it is time to flower but it is not likely.... I leave mine to flower, they are good in salads as well but can be rather strong!
;D
After the first flush, and when the chive plants flower, I cut them back virtually to ground level, and they do grow back again.
Every year I intend to cut the new growth, snip it into a container and freeze it. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions - it's probably why I have no frozen chives in the freezer!!
valmarg
To me, flowers mean that plant is a 'goner'.
When the chives are 6-8" high, I cut 1/3 to the ground. A week or two later. I cut down another 1/3. These will come on in succession.
erm, all the chive plants you sent me produced lovely flower buds tim - but I did chop them down :o
ah, but you only had 2 plants. Difficult to do that in thirds?
I don't really mean goner - just that they are soon going to be past their best, & it's a B nuisance having to extract all the tough flowering stems from the bunch you cut.
This is the first third - V badly hacked down, as you can see!!
they must have multiplied in the post tim, because three arrived woo hoo!
so I can be successful with succession after all ;D
glad you didn't mean real goner :-[ ::) :)
Only two or three with flowers will mean hundreds of new plants later on!
;D
I have brought this topic back because it seems timely! I have a most lovely flowering chive in my lot! The purple flowers are so beautiful!
I have snipped off a few leaves for seasoning but I was wondering, can you save the seed? and if so, when and how to go about it? I find chives to be a bugger to grow, these have overwintered and they are gorgeous. I have tried in pots and they are always spindly and weak.
They're so easy to propagate by division (and benefit from it too).....why bother with growing from seed?
I cut alternate plants in my rows back to soil level, so always have pretty plants and new growth - and youll be surprised at how quickly they do grow. Chives are really hardy in my experience.
oh you can divide them? I didn't know that? I had 2 clumps growing wild in the lot, one i lifted and put elsewhere, should I have pulled it into several pieces? Is that what you mean by division?
Exactly! If you leave the plants, in time they form clumps.....still healthy but become overcrowded, so about every 3rd year I dig a clump up and make about 3 more plants. The seedheads, as previously mentioned, seem to just germinate & grow and grow, as Dad has said.
I find hedges of them useful around my carrots btw.
My wife picks the flowers before they open with 9 inches of stalk and makes a Thai chicken liver stir fry with them, when I get a clump I divide it and have it beside the garden path and its a long path, it can withstand a lot of chopping back and seems the better for it.