How-To Replant Store Bought Chives For Your Indoor Herb Garden

We’ve been experimenting on replanting different kinds of herbs and edible plants for quite a while now.

Our goal is to have an indoor herb garden that can provide us with all the fresh herbs we might ever need for our family.

Chives are a low-maintenance perennial herb. It has beautiful purple flowers but are mainly grown for their leaves.

The chives leaves are the long stems that constitute the plant itself.

Uses Of Chives

Chives give a mild onion flavor to a wide range of savory dishes.

I love to make a chive butter that I believe goes remarkably well together with a grilled steak.

I also eat chives as they are in salads.

But I also love to have chives as a garnish to make food look pretty. When the purple flowers are blooming the chives are extra pretty.

Even though you usually don't eat the flowers, they are beautiful as a garnish. Most people don't know that the flowers are edible. They have an even stronger flavor of onion than the leaves.

We Recommend Organic Chives

We highly recommend that you choose organic plants as we’ve seen that organic one’s survive the stress of replanting better.

But if you can’t, get the regular one and try it out anyway. We’ve successfully replanted non-organic one’s as well.

And also if you’ve opted for organic soil then of course you’ll want an organic plant to keep it all organic.

Seeds vs Store Bought Plants

We’ve used both seeds and store bought plants in our experiments. What we’ve learned is that although seeds work, we want to skip ahead some and use store bought plants to start with instead.

So we’ve moved to buying herbs which we then replant and get to thrive in a way that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance.

By using store bought herbs we get the best of both worlds, we get to enjoy the herbs that are in season, right from the start and also we’re able to experiment more to find out what works best for each herb.

I’ll prefer buying a fresh herb that’s on sale from a store or directly from a nursery that I can use straight away instead of going the seed way.

I believe there’s a major flaw with most of the herbs you buy and that is that they are commercially grown. That means they are grown as fast and as cheap as possible. So getting them to survive and thrive takes a bit of know-how.

If you don’t replant them they usually wither away quickly.

Make Several Herb Plants Form One?

There are people that advocate that you should break up store bought herbs in separate or pairs of two plants per pot. Since one pot usually has many stems.

That’s mainly because if you keep them in an ordinary pot with soil they’ll use up all the nutrients in the soil faster.

We’ve found that with the home-made pot-system we’re using we don’t need to do that.

The nutrients in the soil is of course used in our pot-system as well but when we add our water to it that also has nutrients in it then the soil and the bacteria it contains lasts a lot longer.

Our Replanting-Chives Video

If you want to watch how you can replant a store bought chives the same way we do it, we have made a video for you.

We show in the video all things you need and how you go about replanting your chives, the same way we describe in this article.

The Things You Need To Have For Replanting Chives

To be able to replant your chives and get it to thrive there are a few items you need to have.

Our home-made pot system

We use our own home made pot-system for our indoor herb garden plants.

A standard setup for each of our plants consists of a food grade container and an inner pot with several holes in it that’s suspended above the water level inside the container.

This pot-system is very good. It’s so much better than just using soil and our plants seem to love it!

Our pot-system is very easy to make yourself!

Here you can see my husband Peter show you how to make one and also go through why it works.

Organic soil

You need to have some plant soil.

We use organic soil but as it’s quite a lot more expensive you can go with non-organic soil.

But I recommend you make sure that it’s from natural sources and not made from or mixed with matter from sources like city sewage or other disgusting things you don't want in your food.

I recommend you buy regular plant soil. With the pot-system we’re using our herbs grow like crazy so instead of wasting money on some kind of specialty soil I recommend you instead invest that money in an organic plant soil.

A special blend of water

You will need some water for your new plant.

We use our special blend of water that we’ve found works very well.

Here you can watch our video about how we make it if you’re interested.

You can use regular tap water.

It doesn't contain as many nutrients as our water does, but it can still work.

If you use tap water, I recommend you don’t use the water straight from the tap.

I usually let the water rest overnight or at least a few hours before using it.

A good tip is that if you’re like me and enjoy drinking a lot of tea, I recommend you add the leftover water from your kettle to the water you’re using for your herbs and other plants.

It’s believed that the boiled water is beneficial to plants because it can remove some of the water's impurities.

The water should be cooled to room temperature before you use it to water your plants.

Give your chives additional support

Most store bought chives plants are very tall. They are grown very fast so they tend to not be able to stand by themselves.

So what you might also need is a suitable stick and some string to give it additional support.

Protect your table

I use a waterproof tablecloth to protect the area where I'm replanting.

As you’re handling soil with lots of bacteria and other microorganisms I recommend you buy a tablecloth that you use exclusively for your planting activities.

Wax or oilcloth tablecloths are easy to keep clean.

And also, as an added bonus, when it’s time to replace it you have a lot of different colors and patterns to choose from!

Let your chives plant rest

If you’ve stored your chives plant in the fridge you should let the plant rest at room temperature for a while before you replant it.

I usually let them rest for an hour or so at a minimum.

How-To Replant Chives: Step-By-Step

1. Remove the pot

The first step is to remove the plant from the pot it came in.

All you have to do is carefully press or massage the sides of the pot to loosen the plant from the sides of the pot. Then you just remove it like this.

2. Loosen the soil

After you’ve removed the pot from the plant you need to make sure to loosen the hard-packed soil so that when you water it later the water can reach the roots of the entire plant.

The way to loosen the soil is the same as you did while removing the pot it came in. All you do is gently press or massage the sides of the plant while making sure you don’t break its roots.

This step is quite important. But you don’t have to overdo it. Just loosen it some.

3. Measure the inner pot

Next you place the inner pot on the table and put the plant in it to figure out how much soil you need to use at the bottom of the pot so that the plant and the upper rim of the inner pot are in level.

Then you add the soil that’s required to level the plant with the inner pot. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

If you add too much soil you can always make a suitable hole in the middle of the pot.

Don’t press or try to harden the soil just yet.

5. Add soil to the sides

Next step is to place the plant in the center of the pot and add the soil to the sides, between the plant and the inner pot.

Be sure to fill the entire side of the inner pot with soil.

I recommend you press or try to pack the soil some to be sure it goes all the way to the bottom and also so that it’ll keep the plant straight and also in the center of the inner pot.

I like to have my plants grow straight and to be in the center of the pot so all roots get the same amount of room to grow in and I think it looks better on the window sill!

6. Press the plant some

After you’ve added the soil to the side you finish it up by gently pressing the plant itself.

The goal is to get the rim of the inner pot about half a centimeter or one fifth of an inch above the plant. That way you’re able to water it without having water all over the place.

7. Give the plant additional support

The next step is to give the chives additional support with the stick.

All you do is place the stick carefully in the soil that you added to the sides. Be careful not to destroy any roots.

Then you just place the string around the stick and the plant where it gives the best support.

8. Add water in the outer container

After you’ve replanted the plant, add the water to the container that you’ll be using as the outer pot in our pot-system.

I recommend you add to the maximum water level mark on the container. You can see in our video above how we make that water level mark.

Place the inner pot in the outer container

Next step is to carefully place the inner pot inside the outer container and water it.

As we’ve loosened the soil the plant came with earlier, the water we add now won’t go straight through the pot but stay in it.

Some extra tips

Sometimes the chives seem a bit sad right after you put it down in the new soil. But it will recuperate after a few hours of rest.

Add water

Add quite a lot of water the first few days but don’t soak it. The roots won’t survive too much water. So try to keep it damp but not soaked.

Add more soil

After a few days you might notice that the soil on the sides is lower than the middle part where the plant is. That’s perfectly normal.

All you do is add some more soil to the sides.

But remember, for your convenience, try to keep the soil about a half of a centimeter or a fifth of an inch below the upper rim of the inner pot.

The Best Indoor Spot For Your Chives

When growing chives indoors you need to provide enough light.

Chives need full sunlight for at least six to eight hours each day. A sunny south window offers the sunlight chives need.

So pick a well sunlit window sill to place it on.

Conclusion: Chives

Chives are a beautiful herb that’s very easy to look after and need minimal maintenance.

I have one chives plant that I don't remember how old it is anymore. But it still just produces chives again and again.

Keeping chives alive indoors is very easy.

The good thing with growing chives inside is that you can enjoy it during the whole year. If you keep it outside you only get chives during the summer month.

Good luck with your indoor herb garden!

Healthy wishes from us at,