Gopher wrote:

hey grew
beautifully until about a week ago when they all started bolting with
very strange curly piggy tails with the bud on the end. Attractive and
unusual but unplanned.

It depends on your soil fertility whether you want to remove the scapes or
not. Also, even softneck garlic will sometimes put up these "flower"
stalks, which will eventually have miniature bulbs on them
In my location in the northeastern U.S., leaving the scapes on results in
much smaller bulbs, so I cut them off. As a bonus, they make lovely
stir-fries and/or pesto! Most of what I grow is hardneck, in fact I need
to start cutting scapes right now! I pull/dig when about half the leaves
have browned, which is usually in late July.



Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G