Blights and Scapes

Today was another long and hard work day. We weeded, watered, picked, and planted. We spent a few hours trying to help some tomatoes that have a nasty blight from all the rain and cold. I felt like a surgeon trying to remove cancerous cells as I crawled along the rows, reaching up into the plants, and carefully removing blighted leaves. Working with sick plants isn't fun at all. The whole time, I'm sad for the plants, like they're my good friends who aren't feeling well.

The highlight of my day was pulling garlic scapes. If you don't know about scapes, here's the deal. Not long before it is mature, hardneck garlic throws up a long, slender, big chive looking thing thing that, if left, would eventually turn into the flower. It's best to remove the scapes when they appear, because that improves the overall garlic bulb formation. Well, the lucky coincidence is that scapes are great to use in cooking. They taste just like garlic cloves, except slightly more mild and light in flavor (somewhat like chives). My favorite thing about scapes is that they're super easy to use - you just chop them up and use them as you would garlic. If you want to get your hands on some garlic scapes and try them out, we will have them at the market for a couple of weeks or you can check with any organic farmer usually grows garlic. Chances are that if a farmer grows garlic, he'll have garlic scapes.

Garlic Scapes!