Last edited on October 28, 2026. View history
Garlic Chives
How to sow garlic chives: Direct sow outdoors or sow indoors and transplant seedlings after hardening off
Sun requirement for garlic chives: Plant in Full Sun
Garlic chives are a member of the Allium family and related to garlic and onions. They taste more like garlic than chives. Their long, thin, strap-shaped leaves grow from a small, elongated bulb. Their bulbous roots are rhizomes and the plant grows in slowly expanding clumps. Garlic chives are sometimes grown for ornamental purposes, and also have medicinal uses. The plant's leaves, stalks, and immature, unopened flower buds are used as seasoning in salads, spreads, flavored vinegars, and other dishes. They make great companion plants because they aid in pollination and can deter pests and disease. Their strong scent confuses the carrot root fly, which can normally smell carrots from up to a mile away.
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Garlic chives facts
Lifespan
Height × spread
45cm × 8cmRow Spacing
8cmCrop cycle
Max altitude
Optimal light
What are growing degree days?
A plant grows with warmth, not with days. A growing degree day is one day's worth of useful warmth: how many degrees the day's average temperature is above the lowest temperature the crop grows at. Add them up from planting and you know how far along the crop is, whatever the calendar says.
Say that lowest temperature is 10°C. A day averaging 17°C gives 7 growing degree days. A day averaging 8°C gives none, as it is too cold for the crop to grow. That is why the same lettuce takes about 50 days in a summer and 90 in an autumn: it needs the same total warmth either way.
For garlic chives, the FAO EcoCrop database gives a lowest growing temperature of 2°C and a shortest growing cycle of 70 days at its best temperature, about 910 growing degree days to a first harvest.
Where you've told us where your garden is, we use this and the weather there to predict when your garlic chives will be ready to harvest. We don't use it for how long a plant lives or when it finishes: we go by what members have logged for that.
How members grow garlic chives
Sunniness
Planted from
Photos
Photos
Garlic chives crops
Garlic chives plantings
Where garlic chives grow
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What people are saying about garlic chives
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Who's planted garlic chives
- piranha Front Garden · East Coast, Central...
- shiny Big main bed · Wellington, NZ
- maco front · Wheaton-Glenmont, MD
- Syzygium container · Montreal
- jdartagnanlove Herb Garden · Cedar Falls, Iowa
piranha
Garlic chives harvests
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Time to harvest
If sown now, expect a first harvest in about 70 to 100 days.
From the growing cycle in the FAO EcoCrop database, which is the same wherever it is grown.
Ecological requirements
Data from the FAO EcoCrop database for Allium tuberosum Rott. ex Spreng
| Family / Taxonomy | Liliopsida Liliidae Asparagales Alliaceae |
|---|---|
| Life form | herb |
| Life span | annual, perennial |
| Habit | erect |
| Optimal soil depth | shallow (20-50 cm) |
| Optimal soil texture | medium, light |
| Optimal soil fertility | high |
| Optimal soil drainage | well (dry spells) |
| Optimal soil salinity | low (<4 dS/m) |
| Photoperiod | long day (>14 hours) |
Learn more about garlic chives
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