A few days ago I went out to the garlic patch armed with a basket prepared to snap off all those garlic scapes that were twisting and turning in a strange way towards the sun. I knew exactly what I was going to do with them too.

While blog surfing one night I came across the most delicious sounding recipe using garlic scapes. I was incredibly excited too seeing that I had so many scapes to try and figure out what to do with. The recipe was for a super simple garlic scape pesto. I just used the recipe as a guide and pretty much did my own thing. You can find the original recipe at the always hunger provoking blog, In the Kitchen and on the Road with Dorie.

What I did was roughly chop a large handful of my freshly plucked garlic scapes- probably around 30 or so. They went into my food processor along with 1 cup of slivered almonds and roughly 1 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese. I then turned on the food processor and let it chop up those three ingredients. Then I gradually added about 1 ¼ cups extra virgin olive oil while the machine was still running. Once the olive oil was nice and mixed in I tossed the pesto with some just cooked and still hot pasta.

This was by far one of the best dishes I have made in awhile. Everyone devoured it and was sad to see it gone. My husband called it our once a year dinner and declared it extra special because the garlic scapes are here and then they are gone. They do not keep producing like tomatoes do. One must truly savor this dish as you will not see it again until next year.

Now that we have had our first official meal from the garden I cannot wait for the zucchinis, beans, tomatoes, corn….I am getting hungry as I type!

Prior to making the garlic scape pesto I had really only thought to use the scapes in stir fries or salads. This recipe really opened some doors for me when it comes to using them in dishes. Have you found any interesting uses for garlic scapes? If so I would love to hear about them.

Even though we only planted the nice big cloves to ensure nice big heads of garlic I still had more than enough for my 75 square feet that I set aside just for garlic. Some of you might remember me writing about planting two cover crops of buckwheat just for this planting of garlic I had planned.

I am impressed with the results of my cover cropping for this little patch of garden. This spot is part of an area that was turned into a veggie garden just this year and the area set aside for the garlic only had the cover crop of buckwheat growing in it all spring and summer. Before planting the garlic my son and I cultivated the soil a little to help loosen it up and make it easier to plant the cloves. I was so pleased to see just how much more organic matter this soil now contains. It looked as though I had just mixed in a large amount of compost! Now, if only the buckwheat could turn rocks into soil then I would be all set! (The rocks in this veggie garden are infuriating! I usually use a bulb planting tool to plant garlic but that was impossible to use with the amount of rocks in the soil. In fact I am a little concerned how this insanely rocky soil is going to affect my crop of garlic.)

Planting only the nice large sized cloves left me with lots of little mediocre cloves. I suppose we will just eat some of them but I thought it might be kind of fun to plant a few of them in a pot and grow them indoors this winter. The greens are edible and can be used to top baked potatoes, soups, etc. In fact I have so many left I might just pot some up and give them to friends and family for a little gift.

You won’t be finding any vampires around this house anytime soon!

I mentioned in my post yesterday on cover cropping that I am preparing a 14′x5′ bed for garlic this fall. I can not wait to get the garlic in the ground! (That is after I get over my excitement of improving the soil by cover cropping.) In my Southern California garden I grew garlic twice and it was the greatest thing harvesting it myself and feeding my family with it along with giving some away. And how good it tasted too! Friends raved about the unbelievable flavor it had.

The flavor of homegrown garlic can not even be compared to store bought. (As for anything else we grow ourselves, right?) After I grew some myself I never looked at store bought garlic the same again. I always look at it in the store and think do I have to buy this substandard poor excuse for garlic. But not next summer, next summer we will be digging up our own homegrown garlic again! And lots of it too as I ordered 2 pounds worth to be shipped out by the end of September. We are big garlic eaters in this house so hopefully this will produce enough to last us the year.

It has been several years since I have grown my own garlic and when we put in the new vegetable garden I knew I had to plant some again. It is not at all hard to grow. Rarely is it bugged by pests, in fact it actually deters them from roses and such. The trickiest part for me was trying to know when to harvest them. And even that is not too hard. I think if you can grow onions then you can grow garlic.

When I grew garlic several years ago I ordered the stock from a place in Washington that sells certified organic garlic. I could never have dreamed that there are so many types of garlic to grow! The choices made my head swirl. Those few years ago I ordered a Silverskin subvariety called Creole Red. Words can not describe just how yummy that garlic was and beautiful too. The cloves had gorgeous purple skins and were of a nice size. And the flavor, oh my the flavor. It could knock you on your butt raw. It was actually rather spicy raw. I have been having Creole Red dreams ever since growing it back in my former garden.

I ordered three types of garlic for this fall’s plantings and of course Creole Red is one of them; a full pound of it to be exact. I also ordered a half a pound of Nootka Rose which is a Siverskin along with Chesnok Red which is a Purple Stripe. I can’t wait to compare the taste of all three.

In case anyone is interested I ordered from Filaree Farms. This is my third time ordering from them and I have had excellent service every time. Their site and catalog is also chockfull of useful information pertaining to garlic so I would highly recommend checking it out. Please note that I am not affiliated with them in any way. I just simply think they are an excellent source for garlic. And if you too want to plant some garlic this fall, I suggest you order soon as supplies are already getting low. Lots of garlic lovers out there I guess!