Onions and chives are pretty cold hardy. You should be able to plant them as soon as the soil is workable and they should grow fine. We just leave our chives in the ground and they come back year after year. I live where winters get to -10 and the chives seem to survive the winter fine without mulching or covering.

This is my first year with onions so I cannot comment but I think you could probably grow chives out of your ears if you wanted to. I have had some in a pot and some in the garden for years and I do absolutely nothing to them. They just grow and grow. They are usually up before ANY flowering bulbs.

I ended up starting my perennial bunching onions(Franz, Stevenson) a week ago and they have sprouted and growing fine. I over seeded them and I think every seed started.

How many sprouts should I allow to grow per cell? my cells are 2" by 3".

Then when planting should I seperate them?

thanks,
Dean

My garlic chive root clusters survived the whole winter outside in their original soil & pot. Once I watered them and added a bit of new soil, they started growing again at an insane rate. They have survived 3 frosts and some bad storms since then. They have also self-seeded 3 babies so far! =) I wouldn't worry about the weather for your chives. I'm not sure about onions as this is my first year growing them.

Peace - Steve

This is a pic of them about 2 weeks ago when they were about 3 weeks old...

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I have chives in a bottomless deep container in my garden and they have come back like gangbusters every Spring. They are the first thing up. I don't think I could kill them if I tried.

Bunching onions and chives you don't have to worry about bulb formation, so you can plant them pretty much any time. They're all cold hardy to at least 20'F, so they can go outside pretty early. Here onions and their allies seem to grow best when we're getting regular frosts...