Elephant Garlic Scapes: picking, freezing, impact on garlic harvest

This is the second video in a series about the seven, yes, 7 different products that you can harvest from elephant garlic. This video is about elephant garlic scapes -- the flower stalks. Stick around to the end and I'll also show you what effect picking the scapes has on the final size of the elephant garlic bulbs, too.

"Scape" is just a fancy name for a leafless flower stalk that comes directly from plant's root. Elephant garlic scapes are different than the scapes of other garlic, which start looping around in a circle. If you wait for elephant garlic scapes to do that, you will wait forever! An elephant garlic scape can get 5 or 6 feet tall! Don't wait that long Get those elephant garlic scapes while they are short, so there's no plant energy wasted on growing that tall flower stalk.

Elephant garlic scapes are so easy to harvest! How easy? Well, I had to leave town right as the scapes were coming up. Even though they keep in the refrigerator a couple weeks, I left Klutzy Gardener with instructions to pick the rest of the scapes and put them in the freezer. You can see it's not hard. But you can also watch the video and hear Klutzy Gardener's perspective. In answer to his question, you simply put the chopped scapes and small flowerheads in the freezer, without any blanching.

Here's what's great about elephant garlic scapes. You get a summertime harvest to eat -- and the removal of the scapes increases the size of your elephant garlic bulbs, too. here are some heads of elephant garlic that came from the same patch. Can you tell which ones had their scapes cut off?

Well, I hope things are going well at your place. I'd love to hear how you use elephant garlic scapes -- so leave a comment! Subscribe so you don't miss out on the 5 future videos on more things you can harvest from elephant garlic!

Elephant garlic harvest #1: Spring Leeks --
   • How to use elephant garlic as spring leeks  

Mulching elephant garlic with leaves --
   • Using leaves to mulch elephant garlic  

My gardening playlist:
   • In the Garden  

My channel:
   / @haphazardhomestead  

The curly garlic scape photos are by Rebecca Slegel and used under a Creative commons 2.0 – Attribution license. No changes were made to the two photos.
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/grongar...
Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...