Harvesting Garlic Scapes _ Garden PESTO Recipe.

Hey, I'm Maggie from the blog BackToTheLandLiving.com and today I'm out here in my garlic patch in my garden and it is time to harvest my garlic scapes. So I thought I'd bring you along and show you how I'm going to do that and also what I'm going to do with them. So garlic scapes are the part of the garlic that form only on hardneck garlic and they come off the top of the garlic and as a shoot and they will eventually form into the flower. If you don't cut them off they would bloom and the seeds would be in here. So if you want to harvest the garlic seeds that's what you would do but we actually are going to be using these. So the reasons that we're harvesting them is for one they're really delicious so I'm going to make them into some food and also by taking them off it helps the garlic put more energy down into forming that bulb that we want and not into the flower. And here's my cat coming to join us. So you know it's time to harvest your garlic scapes once they've started to curl over. So this one has just bent over however some of them will form a nice tight curl like this one. So you know that it's time to harvest them and you don't want to leave them too much longer because eventually they will bloom. So you want to harvest them when time is ready. This is my cat Elliot he's going to help me I guess today. So to harvest your garlic all you're going to want to do is just to snap it off where the scape meets the base of the leaf. So you just snap it off or you could use some scissors and I'll just take these pieces in with me to the kitchen and then I'm going to use them. So some things that I'll be using this for are I like just sauteing them up in a stir fry but also they're really good for pesto that's what I'm going to be making today a garden pesto. They're also really good to add in place of like a green onion in any recipe. So another thing that I really like about garlic scapes is that they store really well just in the fridge. So last year I bought some at my local farmer's market before I knew that I could harvest them off my own garlic and I kept them in the fridge for like over four months they just kept like fresh and I could use them like green onions and recipes or anything like that. And so they store really well they're a great way to use up part of the garlic that's just not the conventional bulb and they taste delicious. So I'm going to harvest up my garlic scapes and then I'm going to take you with me and show you where I'm going to harvest my spinach and basil to make my garden pesto. So let's go along and harvest this garlic. So now I moved over to my second garden where I have my herbs growing and I'm going to be harvesting some basil for our pesto and it's a good time because my basil needs pruned back. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go along and I'm going to prune back my basil just about a quarter of inch above where two new leaf sets are starting to grow and that's going to cause those two leaves to branch off and form two new stems and it'll make my basil more productive. And also we want to prune off the top so that it doesn't go to bloom and when it goes bloom it'll become more bitter and not the basil flavor we want. So I'm going to go by and prune down all my basil plants and then take that back for my pesto. So now that I have all the ingredients harvested from the garden it's time to make the pesto. And so this recipe is really great because you can either scale it up and make a bunch with all your ingredients and freeze it for the year or you can just scale it down and make enough for supper time. Today I'm going to make a little batch and whatever I don't use at supper tonight I'm going to freeze in for later in the year. But to begin I'm going to take my garlic scapes and honestly I don't even wash these they're very clean but I did wash my basil and my spinach and I'm going to cut my garlic scapes up into a quarter inch pieces. So now that I have my garlic scapes cut up I'm going to add them to my food processor. So I added a half cup of garlic scapes and then to that I'm going to add my spinach and my basil. So I have my spinach here and I'm just going to give it a really rough chop just so it packs it nicely and I'm going to measure out one cup. So I'm just going to put this all in because I have a little bit more than one cup but one packed cup of spinach and then I'm going to measure out my basil and for my basil I'm going to also do about one packed cup so I just have about a handful of each. So I'm going to give this another rough cut up I'm going to add this all in as well. So to this we're going to add two tablespoons to begin with of olive oil and if it seems like we need more we can add more and then I'm going to add a teaspoon of salt and I'm going to add half teaspoon of pepper and then to this all I'm going to add about a tablespoon of lemon juice. So I'm going to use fresh lemons because that's what I have on hand because I was making jam earlier this week but I'm just going to add about a tablespoon. I'm just going to squeeze it right in of lemon juice and then I'm going to blend this all up and into a pesto. So that's how to make a garden scape pesto. If you want the full recipe I'll have it over on my blog and you can find the link in the description box below. Thanks so much for watching. If you like this content and want to see more like it please subscribe. I'd love to have you along. Have a great day and we'll see you on the next one!