What to Do If Your Garlic Flowers

30.09.2024 - 20:37 / gardenerspath.com / Kristine Lofgren

What to Do If Your Garlic Flowers

I am always singing the praises of garlic – both in my garden and in my kitchen.

Every fall I toss it in the ground, pretty much forget about it and the following year, I’m harvesting the delicious bulbs.

Garlic generally has a long growing season, taking up to nine months to reach maturity, depending on the type and when it’s planted.

At some point during the summer months, the plants might send up long stalks that are different from the foliage.

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These eventually produce blooms that look like white balls held atop flower stalks known as scapes, and typically appear shortly before the bulbs are ready for harvest.

In our guide to growing garlic, we cover how to cultivate both hardneck (Allium sativum var. ophioscorodon) and softneck (A. sativum) types in your garden.

And if you need a refresher on the different types of garlic, our article can help.

But what are the flower stalks and what, if anything, should you do about them? That’s what we’re going to talk about in this guide.

Here’s what I’ll cover:

First let’s talk about why garlic flowers and then we’ll discuss what to do about them.

All life wants to perpetuate itself, plants included. Garlic can reproduce via underground bulbs, but hardneck varieties like ‘Polish Hardneck,’ ‘Persian Star,’ and ‘German White’ also send up flower stalks known as scapes.

At the top of the scape, the flowers form. These aren’t the showy, bright blooms of ornamental alliums and are generally white or purple-tinged.

When the flowers fade they produce bulbils or, rarely, seeds. Bulbils are essentially aboveground