Harvesting

Harvested all my Garlic scapes last week and made pesto with them - and froze most, so we'll have garlic scape pesto for some time to come. Harvested some 'All Blue' spuds today from a pot - Yum! And blue all the way through after cooking. Had some broad beans last week - more on the way - and courgettes starting production. Lots of strawberries at the school for the students - redcurrants too, and broad beans. And they had their potato feast last week.

Blackcurrants and redcurrants at home too - where will I find time to harvest them all?

Garlic harvest

My Garlic has all been harvested, and dried, and I have lots to plant next year, and to eat for as long as it lasts!

If you have been following this blog, you'll know that I got lots of garlic from a generous member (Spade Work) of the seed network. Here's my joyous entry last November.

All the garlic did very well - I'm delighted that I'm one of only a few people in the world growing Gazebo grande. And they all taste great - but I'm smitten with the garlic scape pesto (see bottom of the archive) so I'll be planting as much hardneck garlic as possible.

I have put aside the following to grow again next year - I think this is enough for me - hopefully next year, I'll have some to share.


Marco (softneck) - 7 cloves
Inchellium red(softneck) - 9 cloves
Prim (softneck) - 6 cloves
Gypsy red (hardneck) - 2 cloves
Gazebo (hardneck) - 2 cloves
Susan Delafield (hardneck) - 4 cloves
Misc - grown for supermarket garlic - 1 clove
Unknown hard neck - 3 cloves

Going into the end of last year, I was dismayed that I didn't have a good variety of garlic to sow - that's all changed!

Garlic scape pesto

We are just back from visiting a friend in London, and I wanted to bring her something unique as a hostess gift. So right before we left, I headed out to the garden, and harvested all the garlic scapes that were there. They are funny spiral things, so I had to cut them up a bit to fit in the plastic bag, with a damp kitchen towel. I also packed a little pot of gooseberry jam, that had been flavoured with elderflower, made by my mother, which I was really looking forward to trying. Both items went in my carry on bag.

Surprisingly (or maybe not) the security scanner detected both, and they confiscated the jam! I was almost in tears. So let that be a lesson to all - put any jams in your checked bags - they qualify as a liquid. The scapes however, could in no way be construed as a danger to passengers, so they made it through.

On arrival we made up a pesto with the scapes, some parmesan, pine nuts, olive oil, salt and pepper. It was green and fragrant, and wonderful on bread, in a yoghurt salad dressing, with Tuna salad - definitely a success, and pretty unique. We didn't try it with pasta, but I'll bet it would be good with that too. Or on new potatoes. I didn't measure - worked to taste - there are lots of recipes online. Maybe I'll make a recipe next year...

The stalk works better than the flower part - the flower is inclined to be stringy - and when harvesting, you should cut as close to the ground as possible. I have made some more of the pesto now that I'm home, and am freezing it in an ice cube tray so as to have small portions. Not sure how long it will last, though :-)