Could someone post a picture of these scapes. I'm a first time grower of garlic and I thought the plants would almost be ready for harvesting by now. I really could use the space for other crops. Most of my plants are about 1 to 2 feet high now. I would just like to know about when to get them out of the ground. Next year will add a small raised bed just for garlic. Post some pictures of a scape please. Also, do all garlic plants get scapes?

Thanks again

edgman/Tom R

This is my first time growing garlic, too. Everything I know I learned from the knowledgeable people on this forum. Only hardneck garlic, not softneck, grows scapes, and scapes are round instead of flat like the leaves (much like what grows out of daylilies when they flower.) If you let the scapes grow, they will form little garlic bulbs on the top, but you don't want to let them get that far. Let the scapes grow until they curl around in a circle, and then cut them off where they come out of the plant. By that time, leaf production has stopped, and all the plant's energy goes into developing the bulb underground. If you let your scapes grow, they sap the energy from bulb production. Apparently, you are able to eat the scapes if you cook them as if they were garlic, but I haven't gotten that far yet. I think garlic is ready to be pulled when all but 4 leaves die off. Again, I haven't gotten that far, and I'm going to let the good people on this forum guide me when the time comes. Sadly, I have no picture of the scapes to send you, but I hope my description helps. Good luck with everything, Tom.

Chris

Google image search showing scape pictures:

Here is a link that might be useful: images of Garlic Scapes

DakotaGarlic.com used to have a nice list of scape recipes but the site doesn't exist anymore. However, I was able to locate the page using the Internet Wayback Machine. Photos might or might not show up, but you can read the recipes. (I would suggest printing out the page or copy-and-pasting the text into a word processing program since I don't know how long the archive page link will work.)

Here is a link that might be useful: garlic scape recipes

kdup, thanks for that link. On some of the recipes it appears that numbers typed in as fractions in Word are not showing up on the archive page, even when viewing the page source. :-( Did you by chance have these recipes saved from before the site went away?

Becky

I ask for a little help and get a ton of it and this wasn't even my own subject that was first posted. You people are fantastic. Now that I know what I'm looking for, yes I do have scapes on some of my plants. Will try a few of those recipies also. And the last question is!: if softnecks don't have scapes how do I know when they are ready to pull?

Thanks again for the great images and recipies and help.

edgman/Tom R

The website for the garlic store has good recipes for scapes, too. I'm going to give the garlic scape pizza a try (I think I just drooled on my desk thinking about it!)

Here is a link that might be useful: The Garlic Store