Garlic Scape Bouquet
For years we grew soft neck garlic – because that’s what we got started with. It’s only been about the past 5 years that we switched to mainly hard neck types. We found a lot of different hard neck varieties at farmers’ markets and garlic festivals that looked intriguing, from small to huge, red to tan and mild to spicy. Each garlic type has an individual flavor. It’s been fun to grow the different types but we’re certainly not connoisseurs. When cooking I’d rather peel a couple of huge cloves than several little ones and not worry about the various flavors.
Hard neck garlic grows scapes. They’re a shoot that grows up from the top of the garlic neck and forms a flower and eventual seed head. In order for the bulbs to get bigger more energy will revert back to the bulb if the scape is removed. According to one garlic farmer I talked to, you let the scapes grow until one curl forms then cut it off. Of course, some of our garlic was past that stage, hence multiple curls in the picture above. And some of the garlic, probably a different type, barely seemed to curl at all so I probably let that one go too long before harvesting.
In years’ past I didn’t do anything with the scapes except salvage a few baby garlic cloves from the flower portion. Each year I’ve learned more ways to use them. The flower heads are removed and just the tender green portion of the stem is used by snapping the tougher and thicker end off like you would asparagus stalks.
I cooked with them 3 ways this year: (1) finely diced and cooked with a pot of rice (2) pan fried until crispy (3) garlic scape pesto
Lastly, I put a few in a flower vase which made a beautiful bouquet. They lasted over four weeks as a bouquet, but now the stems have faded and the flowers have gone to seed. What I found very interesting is that the seed heads have continued to grow while in the vase into bigger ‘little’ garlic cloves. They can be tossed in a pot of soup or planted, though with the tiny cloves it’s a two-year process to get full sized bulbs – your choice!
Scape Flowers Gone to Seed