Nice!!!
Iâve got some Trader Joeâs sprouting through the mulch under one of my trees. Iâm going to expand on this next year.
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Sounds like you may be planting too early for your locale. The ideal garlic planting time is when the cloves will have a few weeks to root before freezing weather, but not enough time to send up leaves above ground, which would just be killed by winterâs cold temps. For my location, end of Oct works well and I have even planted as late as Thanksgiving, having to break thru frozen ground to put the cloves in the ground.
Hard neck garlics (the ones with a hard dry stem running thru the center of the bulb) tend to be more winter hardy than the soft neck ones (all cloves no stem in the bulb). But there is quite a bit of variation.
Most folks I know try a bunch of varieties and just end up saving and replanting the ones which work for them.
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I like garlic scape too. how do you harvest it?
My experience is watering before harvest, then use a screw to punch a hole at 2 inches above soil which breaks the scape and pull it out gently but firmly. I have pretty good results this way.
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Yes, as I grow very hardy softnecks, and tolerant of wet feet too. [quote=âJamesWNY, post:45, topic:1050, full:trueâ]
My experience is watering before harvest, then use a screw to punch a hole at 2 inches above soil which breaks the scape and pull it out gently but firmly. I have pretty good results this way.
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OK, this lost me as I thought scapes were the flower. and I do know you can harvest garlic as scallions, but it best to plant them very close together. Small cloves are best. Seeds too.
Yes, scapes are flowers, we eat the stem under the flowers. When they are young and tender, they are delicious. If you google garlic scapes, you will see that the green stems are what people love. Pull the whole stem under flower out of the plant is not easy and it breaks easily.
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I will try your method, it seems easier .it just break so easy when pull and only harvest top half
The garlic scapes do taste great, but there is some discussion in the âgarlic growing communityâ about whether leaving the scapes on longer promotes longer storage. Engeland in his book âGrowing Great Garlicâ talks about an experiment he did leaving the scapes on until just a few weeks before harvest. It produced the longest storing bulbs, at a slight expense of bulb size and no edible scapes to harvest.
In my limited experimenting, leaving the scapes on longer does seem to make the bulbs last longer in storage, so I do it. Might be worth an experiment.
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will both hardneck and softneck produce scapes,or just the hardneckďź
I believe only hardneck.
Yes only hardneck. I do know what they are, have harvested them as recently as yesterday. I just didnât understand the post I quoted? Still donât!
I was talking about how to pull the scapes off to get as much stem as possible without cut it open, which is not an easy task. Guess my English is bad and hard to understand.
Yeah I guess I need a visual, thanks though for explaining. Looks like we will all have very bad garlic breath soon! I like growing onions too. Both can be bought in good quality, still itâs fun to grow, itâs fun to make weaves of garlic and onion and I plan to continue to do so. I would add shallots too. Many types you canât buy or are hard to find. Iâm growing Zebrune and Camelot shallots. A little tough to get going from seed. Once established do well.
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Unless the scape is removed very early in itâs development the bottom of the scape is woody and not edible so for me itâs easier to just cut the scape with scissors or pruner an inch or two up from the leaves.
If prunedďźwill this affect the size of the bulb?
Yeah we did remove them pretty early to get the tender stem, pruning waste too much but much easy to do.
Everything Iâve read recommends cutting the scape to increase bulb size.
Good, I have to cut open in order to remove the scapes. I was worried hurting the garlic bulb size