If you follow garlic groups on the internet as I do, you will see a string of growers posting photos of their harvested scapes as summer moves north, their location getting closer and closer to home, to here. And then, suddenly, it is time for us to cut our scapes.

Not all garlic grows scapes. The scape of a garlic plant is the extension of the stem which, if left uncut, “escapes” to develop a pod of clones on the end of it, on the tip, a little white sac filled with miniature garlic bulbs. Not all garlic grows scapes, only the “hardneck” varieties; and the hardneck grow better in the north, in the cold climes, where we live right here in the Hudson Valley. The soft-necks don’t grow scapes and are better suited for southern, hotter winters, and farmers with the accents of Gomer Pyle and with the Virginia Battle Flag on the sides of their reconstituted tobacco barns, open slats on the sides, rusted FORD by a whiskey rain barrel.

Back in my Fordham days, when I walked across Fordham Road to Arthur Avenue, to the Little Italy of the Bronx, over there with the Italian restaurants and Italian Delis where I would get an Italian sub for my daily bread, passing the old men playing dominoes on wooden card tables on the stone sidewalk, I would run into some of the younger Italian boys from the hood, and they loved to wear a gold garlic scape piece of jewelry around their bare necks, and you could see this icon down below Greenwich Village too, on Mott Street, and it is odd because most Italian garlic does not have a scape. But if you research it, which, of course, I had to do, you will find that the garlic from the Abruzzo Region of Italy (that section of Italy east of Rome in the Apennine Mountains down to the Adriatic coastline) is famous for its red garlic and this garlic does have a scape, so wearing a scape around the neck might be more of a statement of hometown male Italian regionalism than anything I could have imagined as an upstate farmer boy without clan connections, or gang affiliation. I mean, who knew? Did they know?

It is strongly advised to cut the scapes or pull them (they slip right out of the stem if conditions are right), as this allows much more energy to go to the garlic bulb underground which does not mature, or size up, until the end of the growing cycle. So, even if the scapes are not going to be used, they should be cut off and thrown on the ground, or into a corner of the field where they will continue to develop even without the mother plant, as long as they are not in direct sunlight which would dry them out.

We use our scapes for many things. They are great just as they are, rolled in olive oil and grilled right next to the burgers and franks. They can be stir-fried with beef cubes or chopped right on top of a steak in the frying pan. We like to make a garlic scape pesto of the younger ones, mixing them with olive oil, parmesan cheese, pine nuts and a dash of salt. The pesto can be frozen and gives you that taste of summer all winter long.

Some farmers with dehydrators dry out the garlic scapes, crush them, grind them, dry them some more and mix them with pink Himalayan salt to concoct a garlic salt which sells very well at farmers’ markets.

Another favorite of ours is to use the scapes to make a special pickle – pickled garlic scapes, very peppery and crisp and delicious, very low in calories for an all-night munch snack. The scapes are washed and sorted and put tightly into Bell jars and then salt and a pickling mixture is added and the jars are cooked in a canner for 15 minutes to give the scapes the perfect texture and snappy tenderness.

It is an important task to get the scapes off. This year that task has been accomplished. Many steps to growing garlic remain. There are four more steps to go: pulling the garlic from the ground at the most opportune time; hanging the garlic in the shed with fans to cure the garlic; cleaning, sorting, weighing and bagging and labeling the garlic; finally, the selling of the garlic.

On that last point, we have the first garlic on the stand today, green, uncured but juicy and bright. Also, I am registered in three garlic festivals- first the Bennington, Vermont Festival; then, the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, formerly known as the Saugerties Garlic Festival (just about the oldest garlic festival in the country); and, finally, the Bethlehem Connecticut Garlic Festival in October. Wish me luck. See you at the stand. Gosh, what a beautiful day today.
Get your scape on!