Garlic Scapes are a little-known culinary delicacy that are spectacular in taste and texture.

When you plant garlic cloves in your vegetable garden (or in this case when one finds its way near the arborvitaes and takes root!) you will be lucky to harvest garlic scapes from each plant in mid-June.  The garlic scape is the plant’s way of flowering and eventually turning to seed.  Once you see the garlic scape come spiraling out of the garlic plant, you snip it off.

There are 2 benefits to snipping off the scape.  The 1st is that now that you’ve removed the garlic plant’s ability to flower and reseed itself, it will now focus its energies on growing a larger bulb.  The 2nd benefit is that you can now cook with this delicious product of your garden!

Cook with it?  What do you use it in?  How does it taste?

Use it as you would a scallion!  It has a similar oniony taste, though it’s not as strong as a scallion.  It’s texture is fantastic, too.  It has a lot of crunch, which is a great addition to any dish.

Who knew?!