Yes.
Just cut it off after it curls (long before it opens).
I have sauteed them whole, not too cut up, and used them over pasta.

Yep. Last year I even sold them at market as pre garlic!

Scapes have a garlicky flavor but very mild. They can certainly be used in cooking and in salads. IF you plant them, they will grow, but the bulb will only be tiny the first year. Leave it in the ground for another year and the bulb becomes larger and usable. I don't know whether you could leave it in the ground another year and harvest a really nice-size bulb. I have never done that. Many people who grow garlic one year but not the next, but still have garlic come up, was due to the fact that the scapes "self-seeded".

There was one vendor selling those scapes along with his Chinese Pink garlic at our local Farmer's Market.

I bought mine at the farmers' market.

To someone new to cooking with them I would say to use them like you'd use green onions.

Apparently this trend hasn't hit northern Michigan yet!

crittergarden said:Just cut it off after it curls (long before it opens).

Crittergarden, when you say "long before it opens" you're referring to the "flower" at the end of the scape? Do you use that part as well as the "stem" part?

This is like discovering a whole new crop that I didn't even know I was growing!

Yes. You know how any onion will make a flower at the top of a stem?
Well, garlic does, too.
BUT before the flower opens, the stem will curl around (I think they are pretty).
That's when you cut of the flower bud, with the curled stem, and can use it in cooking.
Cutting off the flower before it goes to seed, like with any bulb, causes the energy to focus on the bulb instead of seeds.

I just learned of it a couple of years ago at the farmer's market when they had the "garlic scapes" for sale.

And they ARE yummy.
Garlicky but a little more mild.

Thanks, Crittergarden! I did know about the flowers, on some of my garlic they turn into little "bulbils" and on others (a variety called Music, which I think is a porcelain type), they are just little seeds; but wasn't sure if you could (or would want to) eat those parts. Awesome, can't wait 'til my scapes grow this year!

@drdawg -- Ken, how do you judge when your softneck garlic is ready to harvest? I always get nice bulbs from my hardneck varieties, but with the softneck, not so much! (it seems like some of the cloves are 'outside' of the wrappers. But I hate to dig them too early and lose some growth... )

Ken it reminds me I said I would look at the customs procedures here for you. I gave up when it became too hard to comprehend. It also looked too expensive for small lots of things.

prety kitty, Gleni

Thank you critter. He is in a cattery at the moment and I am off to Melbourne tomorrow for 10 days. Looking at the temperatures down there I might not survive.

Sorry for not answering you, Sandy. I have just returned from a 7 day fishing trip in Alaska.

The general rule of thumb is to wait until the lower half of the leaves have turned brown. But when I dig my hardneck garlic up (usually a couple of weeks before the softneck and Creole), I begin carefully digging around a few of the softneck and Creole bulbs (with my hands) and check to see that the capsules are still intact. I will repeat that every week. If I see cloves beginning to poke though, I will go ahead and dig up the bulbs, regardless of what the tops look like. Unfortunately, you probably will never be able to tell "maximum" size of the bulbs, since each variety has a different size bulb and the size will vary even within the same variety. I have found that planting the larger cloves will produce the larger bulbs and vice versa. At least that seems to be the case.

Thanks, Glen. That's about what I thought.

Thanks, Ken! After I posted my question I remembered you were off on your trip for Alaska -- not like it was an urgent matter, at any rate. Hope you had a great time and are totally sick of eating fish by now! I recently read somewhere else about the larger cloves making larger bulbs, so I need to pay more attention to that, and otherwise it seems to be a bit of a crapshoot as to when to dig them up... at any rate, I guess I'd rather have slightly smaller bulbs that look good, so will keep experimenting with the digging time.