- Keith Funk
Should I remove flower heads from garlic?
Q: My garlic is sending up what look like flower spikes. Do I leave them or cut them off?
A: Those are the flowering scapes of the garlic plant. There is no benefit to leaving them on the plant. These stems can be harvested and used in cooking.
Keith Funk is handling our Q & A this year. You may have visited one of Keith’s Denver area gardens on a tour or know him from his years at Echter’s and now at Nick’s Garden Center. For 30 years he’s been heard every Saturday morning from 7-9 with fellow Wise Guy, Jim Borland, on the Garden Wise Radio Show on Legends 810AM.
I like to leave a few of these garlic scapes, as they create bulbils that you can plant to grow into garlic (takes 1 year to form small bulb, and 2-3 years to create a full sized garlic clove). Even the small bulbs are delicious! Space them out for best results, you can roughly judge the size of the bulb by the size of the stem. Dig them up when the top starts to brown and die off usually in late June, I cure mine in our brick garage, nice and warm and dry for a few weeks before storing. The skins should be dry for best storage, so test a few until they are before storing for best long-ter…