📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Harvesting Garlic Scapes
- ✂️ How Low Should You Cut? Standard advice says to cut or snap only the curly top part of the scape to leave maximum foliage on the plant. However, some experienced growers cut the scape very low on the stalk—taking the top two leaves with it. The lower stem is the thickest and juiciest part for cooking, and growers report that this severe cut doesn’t harm the final bulb size.
- 🍳 What to do with them? Garlic scapes have a mild, sweet garlic flavor. They are incredible pan-fried in butter, chopped raw into summer salads, or pickled (marinated) in jars for winter.
- 🍓 Companion Planting Hack: Planting garlic among young strawberries is a great way to maximize space and deter pests. If you plant whole un-separated garlic bulbs in rich, heavily composted soil, you will get a massive flush of greens and thick scapes!
Do you snap your scapes off high, or cut them low? Drop a comment below! We’d love to compare notes.
Mid-June: It’s Garlic Scape Season!
I harvested my garlic scapes today. They are so fat and juicy this year! Now I’m trying to decide what to do with them. I don’t have a massive amount, so I’ll probably just pan-fry some of them and chop the rest up fresh for a salad. 🥗🧄
Aleksan9ra (Ludmila) wrote:
I harvested my garlic scapes today…
I’ll be cutting my garlic scapes tonight, too. I’m going to have a lot of them, enough to pan-fry and to pickle (marinate) in jars!
Here is how I cut them: I cut the scape very low on the stalk, taking the top two leaves with it. That lower part of the stem is the thickest and juiciest, which makes it perfect for pickling. From my experience, cutting them down this low doesn’t negatively affect the final size of the garlic bulb at all. ✂️
Strawberries & Whole Garlic Bulbs
I planted garlic in the same bed as my young strawberries. The soil there is excellent. In the fall, I laid down a thick layer of mulch made from shredded perennials, and in the spring, I top-dressed it with deep-litter chicken manure mixed with pine shavings. The plants are absolutely exploding with growth!
In that strawberry bed, I actually planted whole, un-separated garlic bulbs (instead of individual cloves), and they are huge. Meanwhile, in another bed where I planted regular individual cloves, the growth is much more modest.
My peas, on the other hand, are a total failure this year. The germination was poor, they are growing terribly, but they are already blooming even though they are stunted.
My early cabbage looks just like yours, Luda. I planted it along the outer edges of my regular late cabbage. 🥬
If you grow overwintering (hardneck) garlic, the plant will send up a curly central flower stalk in early summer called a scape.If you leave the scape on the plant, the garlic will spend all its energy trying to produce seeds at the top, resulting in a tiny, undersized garlic bulb underground. By snapping or cutting the scape off as soon as it curls, you force the plant to redirect all its energy back down into sizing up the bulb. As a bonus, the scapes are a delicious, gourmet spring vegetable!
