How are you using your garlic scapes?

thanks again,will do

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i had no idea there is so much love for scapes. I thought i was the only one.

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Just picked mine yesterday. About 70 plants this year, mostly Music. We’ll probably roast this pile of scapes with olive oil and salt.

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yeah…they are almost weed like though so be careful. I must have dropped some all over the yard because i find little garlics almost everywhere. I bet you could go seed a hillside with just a few garlic plants.

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Stir fry them with pork belly, it’s so good!

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I am glad to hear it is so easy to grow garlic seeds. I have never grown garlic from seeds/bulblets, It sounds interesting to try at least once. If I have garlic grown all over my garden next year, I will have no complains, at least, something I like and bunnies dont eat

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Harvest young and tender and pickle them.
It’s like the best dilly beans you’ve ever had.

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Are the bulblets that form at the tip of the stalks the actual seeds or does garlic have multiple forms of multiplication? If they are seeds, does that mean they have the genetic diversity that comes with pollination or are they genetically identical to the parent? I’ve never thought about multiplying garlic in this manner…

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Editing my earlier post. I found this article that talks about reproducing garlic. Here’s a quote:

“Garlic reproduces itself in three ways, bulb division, bulbils from topsets, and seed. It is likely that some garlic in the wild still reproduces via seed as well as asexually, but it appears that even in the wild garlic plants strongly favor asexual mechanisms. Garlic collected in the wild by plant explorers and researchers generally need human manipulation to successfully produce seed. Not only in cultivation, but also in the wild, it appears that garlic’s capacity for sexually reproducing itself may be diminishing. Interestingly, and fortunately, this propensity is reversible. Subsequent generations of garlic produced via sexual reproduction begin to shift reproductive tendencies back toward sexual reproduction via seed.”

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The bulbils are clones, just like cloves but smaller. I’ve read you can grow from them, but for most varieties you have to let it go for 2 years to get a head. For genetic diversity you need sexual reproduction and true seed. Many types of garlic are incapable of producing seed, like all softnecks. Even many hardneck varieties will produce mostly or entirely bulbils rather than seed, and even on the ones that will make seed you apparently need to manually take the bulbils off with tweezers to get the plant to put resources into the seeds. Here is a quote from an article on garlic seed:

As a bolting garlic plant matures, the scape emerges and first coils and then uncoils as its umbel develops. Garlic umbels have both bulbils for asexual reproduction and flowers for sexual reproduction. Bulbils look like tiny garlic bulbs or cloves. Bulbils and flowers compete for the plant’s resources. With certain exceptions, if the plant is left on its own the bulbils win and the flowers wither and die before they can produce seed. The bulbils must be removed from the umbel in order to tilt the balance toward seed production. Removing the bulbils allows the flowers to develop, achieve anthesis, and produce seed. Interestingly, in subsequent generations of seed-produced plants the bulbils are often far fewer and may not require removal for successful seed production.

If you are interested in ANY aspect of garlic, I highly recommend The Complete Book of Garlic, by Ted Jordan Meredith. It is expensive from Amazon, but my local library system had it.

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Ha ha, you and I were linking to the same article at the same time :slight_smile:

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Very interesting. My softneck has scapes too, just smaller than the hardneck scapes.I am wondering what if pollinate softneck and hardneck together, what types garlic will produce? What about elephant garlic which is not true garlic, but has scapes as well. Pollinate elephant garlic and hardneck, what will produce?

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A lot of great ideas here. We made presto from them last year, but it was too strong. I expect the intensity varies by type of garlic. This year we used half basil and half scapes and lightly blanched the scapes first. Instead of pine nuts we actually used finely chopped almonds. Served with hot house cherry tomatoes (pretty good) and sauteed shrimp, delicious.


We have about a dozen left so might try them roasted, along with some shallots, carrots and potatoes.

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Look delicious

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Thanks for the link. It sounds like garlic’s propensity to set seed is similar to that of potato onions, which not coincidentally also prefer to multiply asexually.

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Yeah i’m talking about the little tiny bulbs… Take a bunch of them and toss them in your lawn and you’ll be mowing garlic grass next year. They don’t size up that well (obviously considering the size)…i’ll have to get out there and take some pics because i have a patch of them growing…

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I always just snap them off when young and tender. I typically grill them, roast them, saute them with other veg or meats. Though my primary use has been as part of an herbal spray for the orchard (ala Michael Phillips’ The Holistic Orchard).

I work at a from-scratch kitchen in a brewpub. I brought a bunch to our chef this week and he quickly blanched them then made a pesto with sunflower seeds that turned out really nicely. We used them on a pizza.

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I frankly have never heard of garlic scapes. I just looked them up. I think we’re growing some garlic somewhere, so I’ll have to keep this thread in mind.

In the winter our lawn is covered with wild onion greens or scallions, or whatever they’re called. They’re a bit milder than regular onion greens. Once the grass kicks in, the greens disappear.

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Roasted and ate our scapes last night, along with grilled burgers, salad and watermelon. Yum.

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it is the garlic scapes season again here in Chicago land. My major motivation of growing garlic is to harvest garlic scapes. It is sooo delicious to stir fry it with bacon.

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