Look closely, and you’ll see a scape just starting to grow from the center of this garlic plant. Garlic scapes – flower stalks – are a wonderful spring treat.  Sautéed in butter or olive oil, with just salt and pepper, the stalks have something of the consistency and mouthfeel of asparagus, with a rich, garlicky flavor.  Each garlic plant will produce one scape – if left alone, it will produce a flower, but they’re usually picked when tender, long before the flower matures

Around here, garlic is planted in October, left to overwinter, and harvested in middle to late June. I grow hardneck varieties almost exclusively, as they are much easier to process, having five to seven (sometimes more) distinct cloves per bulb, and with none of those fiddly, difficult-to-process mini cloves you get from a softneck garlic. Large cloves produce large bulbs – the worst part about growing garlic is that you don’t get to eat the best, biggest bulbs – they are instead saved for planting out next season. I’ve grown Chesnok Red, Persian Star, German Giant, Music, Inchelium Red, Mother of Pearl, and probably a few I’ve forgotten. I have a few varieties in the ground right now, but I’m not sure anymore which ones they are – I simply save the biggest and best for next year.