Help me figure out what to do with excess young garlic

You can boil it up and use the garlic water as a deterrent for moles, ground squirrels and other undesirable critters in your garden.  Works best if you add some hot peppers to the pot.

I have started a garlic and lemon grass boundary border around my garden to keep out squirrels.

Also there is a wonderful Korean dish that uses young garlic, and it can be added to kimchi.  

I have more garlic growing in my garden than I can use or give away. I clean it, put the garlic in a food processor and add olive oil. Process it, transfer to a wide mouth canning jar and store it in the refrigerator. As I use the garlic, I add more olive oil. Sometimes I use the garlic and oil, other times just the oil. What I am going to do next is process the garlic and add water. Divide this into an ice cube tray and store it in freezer. I got the idea of freezing the excess garlic from my ister in Texas who chops and freezes excess onions.

Hi,
Can you send me some ? I m looking for fresh garlic here in southern California everywhere but can't find it, we love fresh garlic !!!
We use that in omelets, fritters, pasta sauce, samosas, beef patties, etc ❤️

Hi Shaun, Rather than send you some of the garlic growing in my yard (which would probably not survive the mailing process), do what I did. I purchased fresh garlic at my local supermarket, planted it and forgot about it. Let it overwinter, it will grow, divide and spread.

G Freden wrote:You have given me an idea for dehydrating garlic leaves and powdering them, when I come to harvest mine.  I always seem to run out of garlic cloves by mid spring, a month or two before the next harvest is mature.  But I always just compost the leaves (though I enjoy the scapes in stir fries);  I'm thinking if I can utilize them as garlic powder, that could tide me over.

I'm updating on how this went for me:  not very garlicky.  It does have a slight taste but is too mild for me really.  What's more it took ages to dehydrate!  I won't bother doing this method again.  I found it acceptable in salad dressings, where raw garlic would be too pungent for my kids, but otherwise, not enough flavor for the amount of energy required.

Lucky for me, I didn't actually run out of garlic this time around;  while I had to peel, chop and freeze my remaining stash around March as it began to sprout, today I still have about half a cup of frozen chopped garlic (which is a great thing to have:  so convenient), the day I dug my new garlic harvest.

This time I am going to experiment with a different thing altogether:  fermented garlic stems.  I will do half as kimchi, trying this recipe: https://kimchimom.com/spicy-pickled-garlic-scapes-sundaysupper/ and the other half as a simple ferment in just salted water.  The recipe given is for garlic scapes, which is not what I have;  I will trim away the outer leaves of the mature garlic and just use the inner stems for my two experiments.  

I once made a recipe called 40 cloves of garlic soup.  It's a cream soup and so delicious. A famous local restaurant makes a garlic soup that people go to just for this.  They even sell it in quart amounts.  It is quite amazing. There are many recipes on line for it, and after being made, I bet you could then can the soup, depending on how much you make.  (Maybe just make the base, which involves chicken stock, garlic....) There is a town (Gilroy) in California that is known for growing garlic and they have a festival every year.  I bet that there is a website of recipes for it.

I remembered this post as I was reading some preserving recipes on "Practical Self-Reliance" and thought that I would put the link that has to do with preserving garlic scapes.  Enjoy:   https://creativecanning.com/pickled-garlic-scapes/

I use it as an acceptable substitute when fresh garlic isn't abundantly available (like now).

I make green garlic salt. When I run out of regular garlic salt, it's a milder substitute.

I pull some green garlic and use it in dishes like green onions, discarding the leaves.

I also make garlic scape pesto.

I've been known to dry green garlic and the scapes too.

This time I am going to experiment with a different thing altogether:  fermented garlic stems.  I will do half as kimchi, trying this recipe: https://kimchimom.com/spicy-pickled-garlic-scapes-sundaysupper/ and the other half as a simple ferment in just salted water.  The recipe given is for garlic scapes, which is not what I have;  I will trim away the outer leaves of the mature garlic and just use the inner stems for my two experiments.  

Now this is much better!  Garilc stems are a lot more fibrous than scapes, but these fermented ones are excellent when chopped finely (I originally cut them into short lengths for fermentation);  I've been adding them to salads and vegetable dishes.  I imagine longer fermentation will soften them too.  But they won't tide me over when the garlic bulbs run out because they'll be long gone by then:  too tasty!