How to Grow Chives: The Most Forgiving Herb in the Garden

GardenDraft Team · July 16, 2026 · 5 min read

Part of: Garden Planning Guides · Crop Rotation & Companion Planting Guides · How to Grow Vegetables — Crop Guides A–Z

Chives are the most forgiving herb you can grow — a hardy little perennial onion relative that comes back every spring, tolerates more shade and moisture than the Mediterranean herbs, and gives you a mild onion flavor with none of the work of growing actual onions. They're one of the first green things up in spring and one of the last standing in fall, and a single clump can feed a kitchen for a decade.

An easygoing perennial

Unlike the dry-loving Mediterranean herbs, chives are relaxed about their conditions. They do best in full sun but tolerate part shade, prefer decent, evenly moist soil, and shrug off cold that kills tender herbs — they're hardy well into frigid winters, dying back to the ground and re-emerging reliably each spring. They grow happily in a garden bed, an herb border, or a container on the windowsill. There's very little that troubles them.

Start from a plant or division

Chives grow from seed but are slow that way, so the quickest start is a nursery pot or a division begged from a friend's established clump — chives take to division readily. Every few years, lift a mature clump in spring and split it into several smaller fistfuls, replanting each; it rejuvenates a tired, crowded clump and multiplies your plants for free. Space divisions a hand's width apart and they'll knit back into full clumps in a season.

How to harvest chives

Harvest chives by snipping whole leaves off near the base with scissors, rather than shearing just the tips — cutting low encourages fresh new blades and keeps the clump from looking blunt and ragged. Take what you need anytime through the season; you genuinely can't over-pick an established clump, and a hard cutback simply brings on a flush of tender new growth. Snip the hollow leaves into small pieces for the mild oniony bite that finishes eggs, potatoes, and soups.

Don't miss the flowers

In late spring chives send up round, lavender-pink pompom flowers, and they're a bonus, not a problem: the flowers are edible with a gentle onion flavor (lovely scattered over a salad) and a favorite of bees, which makes chives a cheerful companion plant dotted through the vegetable beds. Do snip off spent flower heads before they set seed, though, or chives will self-sow enthusiastically all over the garden. Find a spot for a clump on the planting calendar.