Cottage Garden Chives Seeds

Cottage Garden Purple Flowered Chives

A hardy clump-forming perennial, producing masses of tender green leaf stems for harvesting in spring and early summer, followed by purple/lilac round ball flower heads as good as any miniature allium in June.

Dies back following the first frost and overwinters underground.

Flower heads are edible, if a little fibrous, but can be used to dress salads etc.

Tolerates most soils, self supporting, and is disease resistant. We grow it for cutting as a salad crop, and also for the flowers in the front of mixed cottage garden borders. Chives are suitable for growing in pots, on windowsills.

Why Grow Chives?

• 🏡 Ideal for Cottage Gardens – A traditional mixed use cottage garden plant for vegetable and flower borders, 

• Bees love it in early Spring and summer
• Long lived and hardy, very reliable, comes back from being droughted.

Growing Information:

• 🌱 Sow: any time of year in the final flowering position. Alternatively, broad or mass sow in pots of seed compost and transplant to flowering position by splitting the pot of seedlings into small clumps when the young plants are 3-4-inches tall.

• ☀️ Position: Full sun, partial shade, tolerates very poor and gravel-filled soils but loves a moist root run

• 📏 Spacing: clumps 30-50cm apart to form distinct clumps, or in a single row as a permanent planting in a herb border or vegetable garden.

• 🌾 Harvest: cut and come again from early spring as the fresh tender leaves sprout up. If left, the plants will flower in late May and early June. If harvested heavily, clumps may not flower that year. If you have multiple clumps, consider giving a few a Chelsea Chop to promote new tender growth for culinary use, as older leaves and flower stems become woody. Flower heads fill with black seeds in July that can be collected and sown immediately or stored and spread around the garden.