What to Do if Your Garlic Flowers?
08.09.2024 - 18:57
/ balconygardenweb.com
/ Editorial Team
Allium sativum, or garlic, is grown for its bulbs. This garlic bulb has remarkable culinary and medicinal properties, and it also produces flower stems in some hardneck varieties. What will follow next depends heavily on what you want from your garlic. But, first things first.
Flowering is common in hardneck garlic varieties, but softneck ones do not flower–there might be rare occurences, but it isn’t likely. The scapes on hardneck ones can typically be spotted between late spring and early summer. This is a natural process wherein a plant tries to produce seeds and perpetuate itself.
So, how do you identify these? They look like long green stems shooting out from the bulbs, and this cylindrical form separates them from flat, strapped garlic leaves.
If the scapes bloom, the plant diverts its energy toward the flower’s growth, negatively impacting bulb size and quality. Here’s what to do to avoid this.
Some people grow garlic for flowers, as they impart a unique taste to dishes. Flowers taste milder than buds and can be pickled or blended into dishes.
Flowering also leads to bulbs, which you can harvest to grow more garlic plants. So, if you are growing garlic for flowers, just let them bloom for some time. You can harvest them for culinary purposes or leave them to mature for seed collection.
They are a delicious addition to pesto and salads and can be sauteed in butter and olive oil as a side dish. They offer a mild garlic flavor to cuisines.
On the other hand, if you’re growing garlic for bulbs, garlic flowering will impact the quality of the bulbs. The plant’s energy will be focused on flower stems, which will lessen the yield and hamper the size and quality of the bulbs. In such cases, here’s how to remove them.
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