On the hard neck varieties of garlic you will find that the garlic will send up scapes. They tend to be long, hard stalks with a little bulb on the end. You have a couple options when this happens. They can be left in place and then be used to propagate more garlic in the fall.(Or so I have read. I'm not sure what all goes into this.) The scapes can also be cut off, which allows more growing energy to be directed towards the actual garlic bulb. From what I have read you want to try and cut the scape off by the time it has made one or two loops. You can then use the scapes in cooking. They are much milder than your average garlic clove, but still have a very nice garlic flavor. They are great in stir fry, sauteing veggies, or you can even eat them raw. I have even seen several recipes online for garlic scape pesto. I think this would be a great way to use up your scapes if you end up with a large quantity. Or you could, of course, reduce the recipe and still be able to enjoy it!This evening I chose to use mine raw.
S diced it up pretty fine and we put it in our egg salad.
Yummy.
7 comments:
That looks delicious!!
Yummy... in all the years I made egg salad for you when you needed comfort food, that would have been an extra little bit of love..
m
Scaping already???
I guess I had better keep an eye on mine before they 'scape without me...LOL
Thank you for posting about this. I have been growing garlic for 10 years now, but this is the first year I have grown more than just the California Early White variety, which I believe is softneck. I planted about 5 varieties this year with cloves purchased last Fall from my local organic farm store.
Two days ago I noticed that one whole row of my garlic (one variety) has the curly scapes on them. I remembered that this happens sometimes, but had forgotten what they were called and what I should do with them. Thank you so much for teaching me what I needed to know.
I guess I will go out there and harvest them thar scapes tomorrow!
Nice!! No scapes here yet, but I watch them impatiently!! :)
Yum on the garlic, no so much the egg salad.
I never knew the funny, curly growth was called a scrape. Learn something new every day.
We're in full-blown scape too! Yeehaw!
Post a Comment