rainbowgardener wrote:I'm confused. You just planted garlic cloves in October and already the plants have scapes?
Scapes are the white bulges at the ends of the stems after the stems start curling like that. They are the flower buds of the garlic and they usually do not appear until close to harvest time.
I'd assume a confusion of terms here. Personally I think of "scapes" as the more-tender curly top part of the stem including the bud - effectively the whole of the parts shown in your excellent photo. Certainly that's what the local stores sell, as well as what we use, chopped up, in our cooking.
My guess is that bmh76 is using the word to refer to the emergent shoots that appear shortly after planting in the fall.