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HealthyGreenSavvy

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June 2, 2016

Spring Garlic with Seasonal Veggies & Parmesan

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Last Updated on July 7, 2022

Ever tried green garlic or spring garlic? If you’ve even heard of it, I suspect you’re in a small (but lucky) minority.

You may have heard it called green garlic, spring garlic, or garlic scallions, but whatever term you prefer, it’s one of the many delights of mid-spring, around for just a short time. Making the most of spring garlic is one of the delights of eating seasonally all year round.

Resembling a large scallion or small leek, spring garlic has a delicate garlic flavor that pairs beautifully with other spring veggies like spinach and asparagus to make a perfect pasta topping.

Green garlic is utterly delicious and deserves to be better known. This simple but mouth-watering recipe for fettuccine with spring garlic,asparagus and spinach makes the most of green garlic's delicate flavor. Seasonal eating at its best! #healthyrecipes #springrecipes #pastarecipes #garlicrecipes #springgarlic #greengarlicSpring garlic is simply the garlic plant dug up before it can form a bulb. Like bulb garlic, you grow it by planting garlic cloves in the fall. (In a milder climate, you might get away with planting early in the spring. I’ve also heard of people planting sprouted cloves in pots indoors in late winter, a great use for those inedible winter cloves.)

It’s best to get your first garlic seeds from a local source, as it’ll be suited to your region. If you don’t have a source locally, you can order online: softneck seed garlic for milder climates, and if you’re in a colder climate, you’ll need to grow a hardneck variety. The stuff from the grocery store is often treated to keep it from sprouting, the opposite of what you want in something you’re planting!

Related: How to Grow Garlic (and Why You’d Want To)

green garlic growing in the garden

The cloves send up shoots in the spring around the same time tulips begin poking out of the ground. I plant 15-20 of my smaller garlic cloves each fall in a separate planting dedicated to spring garlic. Another 8 or so of the largest cloves get to grow to maturity as garlic bulbs, which I harvest in late July.

Since we get more garlic from our farm than we tend to use, the majority of these bulbs wind up as seed garlic and get replanted for the next season’s green garlic and bulb garlic, an endless cycle of yummy gifts from the garden.

When to Harvest Spring Garlic

The window of opportunity to harvest spring garlic is very short. You want the shoots to grow to full size so you get the most out of your planting, but if you wait too long, the plant starts creating a tough outer skin to protect the garlic bulb.

At that point, the sauteed spring garlic might not be as tender as is desired, or even have a hard inner core. Some folks harvest theirs earlier so they can use the whole plant without discarding the green stems.

How to check: When your garlic shoots have sized up, dig up one of the thicker stalks carefully and check the base where the bulb would start forming. If it still looks like a scallion, you’re in the clear.

When it starts to form a bulb, you’re a bit late, so dig up the rest of them right away. Our spring was early this year and I was a bit late checking on ours, but sauteeing a bit longer and adding a little water to help soften the garlic worked pretty well.

green garlic harvested

If you see a scape — the shoot the plant sends up to create a flower and seed —  forming you’re quite late and the spring garlic will likely be pretty tough. At this point you might just let the plant be bulb garlic and let it go. But keep an eye on that scape.

When it starts to curve around you want to cut it off for two reasons: 1) You want the plant’s energy to go into making a good bulb for you rather than a flower, and 2) The scapes are delicious! Chop them and add them to stirfries as a tender vegetable with a mild garlic flavor or whir them up into a garlic scape pesto.

Since I plant more spring garlic than we can eat in the short harvest window, I cook it all at once and freeze some before adding other veggies to the sauté. Then I defrost the little tubs of sauteed green garlic and add it to whatever veggies are in season for a pasta dish later in the summer.

I’ve always been advised to use mostly the white part, with maybe a few additional inches of green, but you can use more if your stalks are less mature, or you can try cooking it a little longer and adding a little water to soften it.

Growing some of your own food is just one strategy for eating healthy on a budget. Find lots more in my guide, Eating Healthy on a Budget.

Spring Garlic, Asparagus & Spinach with Fettuccine & Parmesan

6-8 large spring garlic stalks
½ pound asparagus, cut into 2” pieces
½ pound spinach, rinsed and dry
1 pound whole-grain fettuccine or other pasta of choice, cooked al dente (this is the best kind I’ve found)

  1. Cut off the roots of the green garlic and strip the dirty outer layer of the stalks. Cut off the bottom half or so for use and discard the rest.* Rinse and chop into thin rounds.spring garlic sauteeing
  2. Saute in olive oil till almost tender. If the garlic is on the tough side, add a little water toward the end, before adding other veggies
  3. Add asparagus and saute till bright green.
  4. Add spinach and saute till wilted.
  5. Serve over cooked pasta and toss with shredded parmesan. Season with salt and pepper if desired.

You can also make this with only spinach or asparagus, just double the amount of the vegetable you’re using. If you like things more full of veggies, you can increase the amounts and the dish will still work well.

If you don’t have spinach, consider using its wild cousin, lambsquarters. Also known as wild spinach, this easy-to-find wild plant makes a nutritious and tasty substitute.

spring garlic with other spring veggies over pasta

*I lay the unused upper half of the stalks across my cole crops as mulch, hoping the smell might help deter resident rabbits and other kale-loving thieves. Not sure how effective it is, but I figure every little bit helps!  You could also save your garlic leaves for homemade stock.

Bon appetit! 

If you come across some invasive garlic mustard, you could also try adding some to this recipe for additional foraged flavor. Find out more about using garlic mustard in this post on garlic mustard recipes!

Pin to save this info on spring garlic and recipe for later!

pin with title text and photos of spring garlic growing, green garlic on cutting board, and green garlic with other spring veggies over pasta

Follow on Pinterest for lots more delicious recipes and green living tips from around the blogosphere!

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Susannah

Susannah is a proud garden geek and energy nerd who loves healthy food and natural remedies. Her work has appeared in Mother Earth Living, Ensia, Northern Gardener, Sierra, and on numerous websites. Her first book, Everything Elderberry, released in September 2020 and has been a #1 new release in holistic medicine, naturopathy, herb gardening, and other categories. Find out more and grab your copy here.

Filed Under: Healthy Food & Easy Recipes, frugal, Gardening, Health & Natural Remedies, Healthy Food, Miscellaneous, uncategorized Tagged With: easy meal ideas, gardening, garlic, spring vegetables

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Comments

  1. Shannon says

    June 4, 2016 at 8:07 pm

    That sounds great. I have grown garlic for several years and never heard of spring or green garlic. I will have to try it next year.

    Reply
    • healthygreensavvy says

      June 5, 2016 at 12:28 pm

      It’s just a few months from planting time, so remember to save some garlic cloves to plant for spring garlic. Or try planting some right now and see if you can harvest some later in the summer. Curious to know if it works for you 🙂

      Reply
  2. Angela @marathonsandmotivation.com says

    June 5, 2016 at 8:52 am

    This looks so healthy & delicious! I love all the greens & garlic 🙂 Pinned and looking forward to trying this! Thank you for sharing at the Sunday Fitness & Food Link-Up.

    Reply
    • healthygreensavvy says

      June 5, 2016 at 12:27 pm

      Let me know what you think 🙂 Thanks for hosting!

      Reply
  3. Kathryn @ Family Food on the Table says

    June 5, 2016 at 10:15 am

    Wow, this is springtime perfection! Love all those gorgeous green veggies – and YES to having some spring garlic!

    Reply
    • healthygreensavvy says

      June 5, 2016 at 12:26 pm

      Enjoy!

      Reply
  4. Karen Grosz says

    June 6, 2016 at 12:16 pm

    Thanks for sharing on Let’s Get Real Friday Party. #LetGetRealSocial. I love the green coloring of this dish. You feel healthy just looking at it.

    Reply
    • healthygreensavvy says

      June 6, 2016 at 12:50 pm

      Wouldn’t it be great if that worked? Look at healthy food and get healthy — great concept! You should patent it 🙂 Thanks for stopping by, Karen!

      Reply
  5. Gaye@CalmSexyHealthy says

    June 6, 2016 at 4:14 pm

    This looks fanatastic! So light and refreshing!

    Reply
  6. Deborah Davis says

    June 13, 2016 at 11:47 pm

    Thank you so much for sharing this healthy, delightful recipe with us on the Healthy Happy Green and Natural Party Blog Hop. I’m pinning and sharing.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How to Grow Garlic - HealthyGreenSavvy says:
    September 28, 2016 at 8:22 pm

    […] replant your garlic endlessly. You can also enjoy the delicacy of a lesser-known garden gem called spring garlic, which is the scallion-like immature plant, before it begins bulbing.  Spring garlic is one my […]

    Reply

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