Beginner Gardening: Chives?, 1 by Ozark

Ozark wrote:
Has anyone here grown chives? I've never grown any kind of onion from seed before, only from bulbs or sets.

My wife and I like chives on salads and baked potatoes, and I found that a little shaker of dried chives costs about 5 bucks in the supermarket! I think fresh-anything is always better than dried, so I got a pack of seeds and planted them in a 4 gallon pot on our deck.

I mixed MiracleGro Potting Soil and dirt from my vegetable garden, and scratched in some chive seeds about 1/8" to 1/4" deep in it. Quite a few came up, but crabgrass came up in the pot even thicker. I've pulled the little crabgrass seedlings out now, and boy, that was microsurgery - getting those out and leaving the little chive seedlings behind. When that was done there were some bare spots in the pot, so I scratched in the rest of the chive seeds. Hey, I can always thin 'em.

I'm hoping to keep that pot going for awhile - outside in the warm months, and we'll bring it inside in the winter. Will that work, and can I harvest small amounts of chives as we want them for a meal? Do you take just a few spikes from a plant, or all of them - and if you do, will they re-grow?

Somebody tell me about growing these, please. Thanks.

p.s. - The oak twigs are stuck in the pot because otherwise my wife's cat would probably think that's a fine place to lay down. lol