Chives

Chives are cut two to six times a season depending on climate and market, close to the base, and regrow from the crown. The operation resembles cutting a grass more than harvesting a vegetable, and it means yield is a function of regrowth speed and stand vigour rather than of a single ripening event. A stand cut too low or too often thins out and is replaced.

A stand raised from seed takes a season to become productive; one established from divisions produces sooner. Either way the crop occupies the ground for several years, which takes it out of an annual vegetable rotation and puts it into the part of a holding reserved for perennials — a real constraint where land is rotated for soil-borne disease reasons.

Because the crop is hardy and dormant in winter, clumps can be lifted, chilled and forced under protection to supply leaf out of season. Much of the year-round supply in temperate markets is produced this way rather than from field cutting, and forced material is a different product from field-cut leaf in both flavour and shelf life.

Flowering coarsens the leaf and diverts the plant from regrowth, so stands grown for leaf are cut before or at flowering. Where the flowers themselves are the product the management inverts, and the two markets cannot be served from the same cut.

A perennial cut several times a season removes nutrients steadily and depends on the crown surviving winter in good condition. Fertilizer rates, timing, and forms should follow local soil tests and regional guidance. AgricultureID does not publish universal fertilizer recommendations.

Allium rust, downy mildew and thrips are the main problems, and a perennial stand cannot be rotated away from them, which is the principal disadvantage of the crop's stand life. Management combines resistant varieties, rotation, monitoring, and — where justified — locally authorized control products applied according to their labels.

Moist, well-drained soils with good organic matter suit the crop; waterlogging in winter kills crowns. Soil suitability should be assessed with local soil survey information and, where available, field testing.

A stand that is not rotated accumulates perennial weeds, and the crop's own habit — fine upright leaves cut close to the ground — gives almost no competitive shade. Weed control in an established stand is the main reason a grower replaces it, more often than declining vigour in the crop itself.

Seed is short-lived and loses viability within a couple of years, so growers who raise their own stands buy fresh seed rather than storing it. Division sidesteps that entirely and is why so much of the crop is propagated vegetatively, at the cost of carrying any disease in the parent clump forward.