Garlic scapes

Last fall we planted a bed of garlic and onions. It is finally time for a detailed inspection and a little pre-harvesting.

We planted 10 different varieties: 5 different garlics, 2 shallots, and 3 onions. Neither of the shallots produced much of anything (I think we saw two total plants.) FAIL! Which is too bad, because we REALLY love shallots. Oh well!

The onions are all a little spotty, and all have started to produce flower seedhead. Unless you are specifically intending to raise seed, you do not want those seedheads around — they are just sucking resources from the plants. So we snipped off all of those onion seedheads today so that the plant could put all of its energy into the bulbs.

Snip snip little flower buds.

But the really exciting part of today’s garlic and onion bed adventure was harvesting the garlic scapes! Scapes are the curly offshoot of garlic plants, and like the onion seedheads, you want to cut those off so the underground bulbs can develop. But UNlike the onion tops, garlic scapes are a delicious little goodie! You simply cut the snapes off where they meet the plant. The curlier ones are perfect timing (if they are straighter, they are a little past their snipping prime.)

We decided to snip them up and freeze-dry half and use the other half to flavor some olive oil. Of course, once we had created the flavored oil we found out that you can’t infuse oil with garlic at room temperature (hello, botulism!) So we will have to let those sit safely in the refrigerator, and then we can drain and use the oil and will have to freeze the oily scapes. I’m glad Steve did some internet checking after our project!

The scapes look like a soft, “green onion-y” leaf, but they are actually hard in texture, more like a very thin and smooth asparagus.

Adorable jars of botulism, yum.