It is soon time to cut your garlic scapes, if you haven't done so already. I've been getting a few emails of people wondering if their scapes should be out by now, or if they are unusually late. By now, yes, they should be out and starting to droop into their first coil, (unless you have a softneck variety which doesn't normally produce scapes). And yes, this year the scapes in my area are late. My Porcelains are finally starting to make a soft coil.
If you also experienced a cold wet spring in your area, then things were probably slow to get going. Garlic Harvest can be as much as about two weeks later on a wet cool year, or two weeks earlier on a hot dry year, that's just how it is. Scapes seem to track the daylight patterns better (Summer Soltice being the initiation of the scape production in the plant), but they can still be a week or so later or sooner than usual.
For Porcelain type Garlic, July 6th is my benchmark for cutting scapes - note that that is for getting rid of the scape, not for eating it, as I let my scapes get a bit woody and stiff when the main focus is for bulb quality.
It looks to me like July 6th will be a good time for me to cut my eating scapes this year, so we could be about a week late...[Correction as of July 4th, Turns out scapes really do come at about the same time every year, all this heat maybe sped them up, I'm going say they are just a couple days late this year. My Porcelain scapes are ready to eat now, and a few are a tad over mature. LOL, maybe they were late to show up, but they made up for it once they got going.]
One of my favourite things to do with scapes is to use them in a beautiful Korean recipe for fermented scape sauce. As with most beautiful things, it's really simple:
2 parts Soy Sauce (no wheat soy sauce if it needs to be gluten free)
2 parts vinegar (pickling strength 5%)
1 part sugar
Fresh Garlic Scapes
Combine the first three ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Cool.
Meanwhile, cut flower end off of the garlic scapes and chop into fine pieces (you can cut into 2 inch lengths and feed into a food processor if you like, otherwise 1/8 inch (or 3 mm) pieces).
Pack scapes into large, clean, (preferably sterile) jars. You need to make enough of the soy sauce mixture to cover however many jars you want to make.
Cap the jars loosely and let sit for 1 week, at room temp.
Strain juice off. Boil juice, cool and add back to jars.
This sauce can be consumed fresh, from the fridge for a couple weeks.
Or, you can follow this next step for preserved sauce, and enjoy all year round (they make great gifts, then you can woo even the garlic critics and get them addicted to garlic too! Make sure you make enough to last until the next garlic scape harvest!) :
After the one week fermentation period, Empty the jars into a sauce pan or stock pot, and boil down, until the sauce begins to thicken a little.
Pack hot into sterile canning jars: like you would do with jam, leave a 1/8 inch space at the top, below the lid, and fingertip tighten the canning lids. Set jars to cool with a dish towel laid over them to prevent drafts from creating a premature seal. Make sure all jars are sealed before storing.
This stuff makes excellent sauce to use on roast meat, sandwiches, with grilling, etc.
Garlicky Regards, Julie