Alita's First Garlic Harvest

Alita Phillips finally has the 'luxury' of being a full-time country woman because she recently retired from her office job.

Even though she worked full-time, Alita always had a small veggie patch of 'regular' plants, such as tomatoes, but did not have the time to learn about how to raise other plants.

 Inspired by an earlier OCJ post about garlic scapes, Alita got busy working in an existing garlic patch. Today she sent me an email with this picture of her first garlic harvest. As you can see in Alita's picture, she has an impressive harvest of this savory and healthy plant!

Sadly, my own garlic patch needs attention. Maybe I'll think about it tomorrow?

Marcheta *jut like "Scarlet"



Years ago my sister, Sheree, gave me some garlic starts.  I planted them at the edge of my asparagus patch and they gradually took over.  This spring I zealously worked on clearing it because it was crowding out the asparagus.

Then Marcheta posted a blog about how to harvest garlic.  I had not known when or how to do it properly to get nicely developed heads with the papery covering like you buy on the grocery.  You can tell by the photo below, following her advice worked.

My garlic has always "volunteered," but this fall I'm going to plant some to make certain I have a crop to harvest next July.

Thanks, Sheree & Marcheta!!

"Homemade Gourmet" (garlic oil)

 

 

 

Today I am talking about garlic scapes again. I made 3 different oils with the scapes...vegetable, canola, and olive. The method is simple (and you can use garlic bulbs, too), simply peel the scapes or cloves, put them in a glass jar, and cover with your oil of choice. Don't the various colors of the scapes make the jar pretty?

 

Filling a half pint jar like this with the scapes is more like preserving the scapes. In another jar, I only add a few scapes and then filled the jar with oil.

 

Each way gives me  'homemade gourmet' oil and scapes.

 

Marcheta *filling the pantry

Garlic Butter using Scapes

These papery tops on garlic stems are scapes, which are the "flowers" that make new seeds. They should be removed from the plant when they look like these, with stems beginning to curl.

The inside of the scapes have a milder garlic taste than the bulbs, when used before they become as hard as pellets, they are wonderful additions to anything that you'd use garlic for, it is just that the texture is different.

I decided to make garlic butter. I wasn't sure how much minced up scapes to add to a stick of butter, so I went searching online. I really did not find much in the form of actual recipes, so I made up my own. 

First, I gave the scapes a shower.

I peeled back the skin and minced the inside. Notice how some of the scape looks like petals. Those that were further along in development were taking on the appearance of garlic bulbs. If left any longer, they would have become too dense to mince up.

I was just guessing on amounts. After giving the minced scape a taste test, I decided that a tablespoon or so would be enough to flavor a stick of butter. I used real butter. To make the spread a bit looser, I also added a tablespoon of olive oil.

One of the websites I visited suggested adding herbs to garlic butter. I gathered up chives and parsley, rinsed them, and cut them up with kitchen shears. I don't know how much...just "some", as you can see in the picture. Those bunches were for one stick of butter.

Half of the butter I made was with herbs, the other half with garlic scapes and chives.  To identify them, I put a parsley leaf on the herb butter and a few sprigs of chives on the garlic/chive butter.

So...what do do with all that butter?  I gave some away, but froze most of it. So now you know one possibility for a garlic scape harvest!

And that's all she wrote on making garlic scape butters! Easy, huh?

Marcheta *why have boring butter?

Garlic Scapes

This is what my garlic patch looked like about 10 days ago. The patch was planted by my friend, Pete (of Pete's Portable Peppers fame) a long time ago. After starting the patch, he began gardening at another location and never came back for his garlic.

As for me; I had no clue how to raise garlic, when to harvest. My total lack of garlic knowledge even included not knowing what part of the plant the garlic actually came from. 

Pathetic, isn't it?

I would go out later in the summer and pluck off the top thingys, thinking that they were the garlic. By that time, they had become as hard as rice pellets. Trying to cook  with them was hopeless, so I gave up.

Enter an Expert.

I have another friend who is a fantastic gardener. Tim and his wife Patty (also a friend) were at the house. I was showing them the orchard when Tim noticed the garlic. I told him the sad saga of this patch and he gave me my first Garlic 101 lesson. Tim told me that those cute little curly-q thingys are called "scapes" and that, really, people do cook with them. They just don't let them get rock solid, and now is the time to harvest the tasty morsels and put them to use.

Scapes? Huh? what the....? 

I am visualizing a huge question mark hanging over your heads just now. Relax. It is harmless. I know. I had the same experience. 

Enter the Internet

About.com explains: Garlic scapes are the "flower stalks" of hardneck garlic plants. 

A short session with an Internet search about garlic scapes was all it took to convince me to go OCD and do as much with my garlic scapes as I can. Oh, the possibilities were absolutely TASTY!

Garlic butter!

Garlic oil!

Garlic vinegar!

Umm, umm, umm, umm, UMMMM! My brain got heady from thinking of all the dishes that I can make. And to think, this patch has been in my own backyard all this time. I felt a bit like Dorothy when the light bulb went off in her head.

To be continued.....

Marcheta *not in Kansas any more