Garlic Scape Heaven

Yesterday we took a trip to pick up horse manure at Roger Williams Park Stable. Being from horse country, New Jersey, I was happy to make the trip; I love the smell of horses. After shoveling a couple trash bins full, we set off back to the farm, stopping off in just one place: Mills Coffee Roasting Company. Rich and I popped in to ask if they would be interested in saving their coffee byproduct for our compost bins again--this will be the second summer collecting compost from them. Composting coffee is always a good idea. It covers up any unpleasant smells (especially those coming from the wet, decaying weeds I wrote about a couple posts ago) and is an awesome edition to the energy content of the soil.

Today was the Thursday farmers' market, so we spent most of the morning harvesting. We started off picking raspberries, then moved onto kale, cilantro, garlic scapes, collards, dill, lettuce, bronze fennel, and edible flowers.

The morning began with heat, hats, sunglasses, and raspberries. All of a sudden, Patricia pointed at the sky and I was shocked to see a huge ominous rain cloud, swollen purple and stirring on the North side. In minutes, the clouds had spread, spanning the entire sky. We were about ready to run for the greenhouse (or dance in the rain) in an anticipated torrential downpour. Surprisingly, the clouds left almost as fast as they came, delivering only a few drops. Soon the sun was out again and it was time to harvest garlic scapes.

I had never even seen a garlic scape before I started working at City Farm this summer. For anyone unfamiliar, it is a long shoot that grows out of the top of a garlic plant in a swirling formation.





Scapes taste like garlic but become ready for harvesting earlier in the season than the actual garlic bulb. By cutting off this shoot, you not only get to enjoy a delicious alternative to garlic bulbs, but you will be helping the plant to transfer it's growing energy from the top of the plant to the bottom, where the bulb lies. By doing this, the bulb can grow much more easily.

I like to chop up the scapes and stir-fry them with other veggies. It is cool that garlic plants are able to give produce for basically the whole summer with scapes early on and bulbs later.

After Harvest, we set off to SCLT to weigh and bag the produce. I especially enjoyed it today because we gave the lettuce mix a little color by tossing some edible flowers. We also put together a little carton of the left over flowers to sell at the market. They included Calendulas, Evening Primrose, Johnny Jump-ups, Flax, Nasturtiums, Bachelor's Buttons, and Borage Flowers (which I tried for the first time today, they taste like marshmallows!).

~Johnny Jump-ups~

Tomorrow is the big harvest for Saturday market :)