Country Living in a Cariboo Valley

Homesteading in BC

Garlic Scape Pesto Recipe

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You’ve got to try this Garlic Scape Pesto recipe – perfect for pairing with pasta!

If you love garlic, you will want to give this yummy and easy appetizer recipe a try – this Garlic Scape Pesto recipe is one of our favourite recipes to make in late spring or early summer. Loaded with fresh garlic flavor, this flavorful twist on the classic pesto dish is a great appetizer condiment to serve with chips, crackers, and more!

Pair it with another one of these Incredible Dip Recipes to create a tasty and unforgettable appetizer platter.

Garlic scape pesto in a bowl with crackers.
Enjoy this homemade pesto as an appetizer dip or mix it into pasta for a delicious dinner!

Why You’ll Love this Pesto Recipe

If you’re familiar with the bulbs and cloves of the garlic plant, you’ll love this yummy garlic scape pesto. This sauce uses the green “scape” of the garlic to incorporate a grassy and sharp flavor that enhances the pesto and gives it a slightly different flavor than the actual garlic cloves.

Whether you’re looking for a salad topping, a spread for sandwiches, a pizza topping, or a dip to be used as an appetizer, this pesto is a delicious option! Pesto tastes especially great on pasta with chicken.

It only requires 4 main ingredients and your choice of seasonings. It’s beyond easy to make high quality pesto right in your own kitchen!

Garlic scape pesto in a mason jar sitting on wood table. Text over reads Best Garlic Scape Recipe.
Save this Pesto recipe to your Pinterest board.

Keep reading for the recipe – why don’t you think of making some of this pesto this year?

 

Garlic Scape Basil Pesto Ingredients

Use the Scapes while they are still curly – remember, the earlier you harvest them, the sooner the energy goes back into making each bulb bigger.

A pile of garlic scapes cut into pieces.
Garlic scapes are typically only able to be harvested in the late spring or early summer, so take advantage while you can!

 

  • Garlic Scapes – this green part of the garlic plant has a flavor somewhat similar to chives or scallions but with a subtly pungent flavor that’s unmistakably garlicky!
  • Toasted Sunflower Seeds – provide some texture as well as the delicious roasted flavor.
  • Fresh Basil – a staple ingredient in any pesto, basil gives your dish a nice fresh and green flavor.
  • Salt and Pepper – you can use more or less of each of these seasonings depending on your preferences.
  • Extra Virgin Olive Oil – gives your pesto a smoother texture and a subtle oily flavor that pulls all of the ingredients together.

 

How to Make Garlic Scape Pesto

  1. Begin by cutting the garlic scapes into pieces about 2 inches long. Roughly chop the basil leaves.
  2. Place scapes, basil, sunflower seeds, salt, and pepper into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until smooth.

    Pouring olive oil into the bowl of a food processor.
    Using a food processor makes preparation for pesto a breeze.
  3. Slowly pour the olive oil through the funnel into the bowl as the processor is running, until the pesto is of good consistency.

 

Garlic Scape Pesto FAQs

What are garlic scapes?

For every single head of garlic that will be harvested, there will be a garlic scape, or stem. Read more about Garlic Scapes here if you like.

It’s important for each of these scapes to be cut off when growing garlic. This way as much energy as possible goes into forming the root garlic bulb and each garlic clove. The bigger we can get them to grow, the wider our smiles.

We pickle a lot of the scapes and you can get the recipe for our Pickled Garlic Scapes here. They are also good to eat fresh and great when added into scrambled eggs and quiches. We also steam them and have them as one of our vegetables at dinner time.

Where can I get garlic scapes?

If you don’t grow garlic yourself, you can often find the scapes being sold at your local farmers market. You’ll have to look in the late spring and early summer, as this is the time of year when the scapes are ready.

Do I have to make this pesto ahead of time?

You can serve this delicious pesto right away. It’s so good alongside some good quality crackers or chunks of fresh bread. This Garlic Scape Basil Pesto can also easily be frozen in an airtight container or in freezer bags. Just pull a container out whenever you like and thaw in the fridge.

If you want to keep it in smaller quantities that are easy to add to things like pasta dishes, you can also portion the pesto into ice cube trays.

Several containers of pesto on a counter.
We love to make huge batches of this garlic scape and basil pesto and save it to be eaten throughout the year!

 

Popular Variations and Substitutions

  • Skip the addition of basil if you like.
  • For a cheesy twist, add some grated Parmesan cheese.
  • Add lemon juice for some acidic citrus flavor to lighten things up.
  • Instead of sunflower seeds, you can use almonds, walnuts, pine nuts or pumpkin seeds. We find the pine nuts pretty expensive in our area so we use sunflower seeds.

    Goat cheese with pesto, olive oil, and pita bread.
    Serve your pesto with some cheese and bread for a simple but flavorful dish.
  • Serve alongside a round of goat cheese – drizzle some EVOO over the goat cheese and grab some crackers for a special appetizer.
  • Pesto is also great to serve with pasta, chicken, stir fry, or to use as a sandwich spread.

 

More Garlic Posts You’ll Love

Garlic Scape Pesto in a bowl.
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Garlic Scape and Basil Pesto

Garlic Scape Peso in a bowl alongside crackers

Garlic Scape Pesto

Yield: about 2 cups Garlic Scape Pesto
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 10 minutes

You'll love this Garlic Scape and Basil Pesto made with super fresh ingredients! A subtly garlicky and fresh spread that's perfect for appetizers, sandwiches, salads, pasta, and more!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups Garlic Scapes, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
  • 3 Tbsp toasted sunflower seeds
  • 3 cups fresh Basil
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

  1. Place all ingredients except the olive oil into your food processor and blend until smooth.
  2. Slowly pour the olive oil through the funnel into the bowl as it is blending, until the Pesto is of good consistency.
  3. Serve immediately. Store any leftover pesto in the refrigerator.

Notes

  • The basil can be omitted, if you prefer a more garlicky pesto.
  • Add ingredients like Parmesan cheese for extra flavor.
  • Pine nuts are often used for pesto, but sunflower seeds can be easier to find and less expensive in some areas.

Nutrition Information:
Yield: 8 Serving Size: 1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 146Total Fat: 15gSaturated Fat: 2gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 13gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 258mgCarbohydrates: 3gFiber: 1gSugar: 1gProtein: 1g

Did you make this recipe?

Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on Pinterest

© Annie
Cuisine: Italian / Category: Recipes

 

 

originally published 2012; latest update May 2025

Baking Your Halloween Pumpkin!

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What do you do with your Halloween pumpkin once the day passes? Some people toss them into their compost pile, others simply throw them in the garbage can.

But why not think about baking your Halloween pumpkin?

 

A carved pumpkin sits on a porch.

 

 

Some communities have a Pumpkin road, some long road out in the outskirts where people bring all their Pumpkins to dot the sides of the roads.

That looks pretty cool and it becomes a tradition in these towns.

 

Families drive together down the road and look at all the pumpkins; at night, some are even lit. The pumpkins will decompose or provide food for wildlife.

pumpkin on a front porch

 

Since we don’t have a pumpkin road, I’m going to take our Pumpkin and turn it into pie – it’s not hard to do. We didn’t carve out our Pumpkin this year, so there is no candle wax dripping down all over the inside.

I would never use a carved out Pumpkin that held a candle to turn into Pumpkin Pie.

Pumpkin with eyes and mouth put on with a Sharpie, sitting on a front step.

Instead, I used a black Sharpie and just drew the face on. I’m not very artistically gifted, so his face is pretty basic.

I like him, although he does have a couple dental problems.

 

 

baskets of pumpkins for sale at market

 

Remember too, grocery stores will put all their “leftover” pumpkins on sale this week.

If you have the time, buy  6 or 8 if you can get a great price on them. Then get started preserving them for using over winter.

 

Why you want to bake your Pumpkin

A woman digging out the pulp from inside a pumpkin.

 

Mostly, for the convenience. Set aside an afternoon and that morning, put them in the oven. In the afternoon,  process all them.

You’ll be done before dinner and have several bags of pumpkin puree in the freezer.

 

How to Bake a Pumpkin

Cut a “cap” out of the top of the pumpkin, using a large sharp knife. You will want a large enough hole, so you can get inside and scrape out all the pulp and seeds.

I like to use a large, heavy metal spoon to scrape the sides and the floor of the pumpkin.

You could also cut the pumpkin in half, much like you would a squash. Either way, once it is all scraped out, put it in an oven set at 350F.

Let it bake for awhile.

 

large chunks of pumpkin right out of the oven

 

The time needed to bake really depends on the size of your pumpkin. Large pumpkins can take a couple of hours to cook all the way through.

Once the Pumpkin is soft and mushy, it’s ready. Test it by poking a fork in it.

Remove the pumpkins from the oven and let them cool. Then, just cut or break them apart. Scrape all the flesh into a bowl.

Throw out the outer skin. You will have already removed all the stringy stuff and seeds, so this part of the process is very quick and easy.

Use the Pumpkin flesh to make a pie, cookies or a loaf or eat it as a side dish with dinner.

 

bags of pureed pumpkin sit on the counter ready for the freezer

 

To preserve some, just fill Ziplock bags, remove the air and pop in the freezer. I like to freeze mine in quantities for making Pumpkin Loaf or Pumpkin Pie.

 

a pumpkin on a baking sheet and a bowl of pumpkin puree with a spoon

And why not set six seeds aside and plant them next year for Pumpkins in the garden?

 

 

Pumpkin seeds sitting on a pan.

 

 

 

Getting the Yard Ready for Winter – Part 2 The Garden

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During the Spring and Summer months, we were busy with planting seeds, transplanting seedlings, weeding, irrigating, weeding again, thinning, more weeding and finally harvesting vegetables and fruits.


Our Vegetable and Berry Gardens have given us a fantastic harvest, even though the weather this year was mostly cool and quite rainy.

Sure we had two or three weeks of Summer, but gorgeous hot sunny days would be followed quickly by cooling temperatures and even more rain.

We were on the other side of the pressure system that brought so much heat and drought to other areas of Canada and the USA.

With our native soil being clay (and I mean heavy clay, clods of clay) we need to continually be amending the Gardens with things like compost, manure, leaves etc. Most Gardeners have a compost pile, but we don’t have one.

 

 

 

Usually these pigs take the place of a compost pile. Where other Gardeners throw all the lawn trimmings, kitchen waste, vegetable plant trimmings, etc onto their Compost, we normally just toss it in for our pigs.

They love almost everything we bring them and we will get the goodness returned to us by adding the pig manure to our large manure pile.

 

 

We have access to horse manure and lots of it – friends here in the Valley have several horses and they are always willing to have us take away manure from their pile.

As the Garden year progresses and vegetables are harvested, sometimes we will plant another vegetable in its place.

 

 

Peas, for instance, usually don’t carry on setting pods throughout the whole Summer here.

So when they are finished, we pull them and plant some more Broccoli or even Radishes in place of the Peas.

At some point, we stop with planting new rows and instead start putting a nice thick layer of manure on the row.

If we do this is mid-Summer, we use only well composted manure (it has been sitting in our pile for at least 3 months).

 

 

At the end of the Gardening season, once the vegetables have been harvested, we really start loading the horse biscuits onto the Garden.

As we get an area done, I grab container of Fall Rye and liberally seed it on top of the Manure.

Then, I rake it in, it doesn’t have to be a perfect job but raking it in will ensure that the seed has made contact with the “soil”.

As Autumn progresses and the leaves start to fall from the trees, we rake them up and add them to the Garden as well.

 

 

 

Buckwheat is also used in our Gardens – we love to use Buckwheat as a mid season soil amendment because it grows and matures so quickly.

However, because Buckwheat does not tolerate frost well, we cannot use it to its full potential in the Fall.

There is really no possibility of “too much of a good thing” here – the more amendments you can add, the more your soil will improve.

Unfortunately, this is not a one time thing (wouldn’t that be great!).

It is a part of the yearly process of trying to improve the Garden soil. Feeding your soil needs to be part of the ongoing process of Gardening.

During the growing season, use well composted manure to side dress and top dress your vegetables.

 

 

And feeding your soil pays off – amend your soil this year and you will see the improvement next year.

Then, repeat next year and reap the benefits the year after that.

If you have Perennial Vegetables and Fruits growing, give these areas a thorough weeding in early Fall. Then, add a nice thick layer of well composted manure all around these plants.

They will benefit greatly for the added attention and your Harvest should be better the following year.

 

 

 

If you have Raspberry Canes growing, be sure to get in that patch now and cut this years fruiting wood down to the ground.

This will clean up your patch, get rid of any dead wood and you will get many new suckers come Spring.

This year’s new suckers will bear net years fruit –  a good thing to keep in mind!

 

 

 

If you use Row Covers  in the garden, now is the time to remove them. Clean them first before putting them away.

I use clothespins to attach the Row Covers to the perimeter Garden fence and then hose them down really well.

Leave them for half hour or so to dry, then I fold them and bring them in the house for the Winter. Taking care of items like these will ensure they will last years longer!

So get started on getting your Gardens ready for their Winter rest. Just as we rest from Gardening during the Winter, our Gardens deserve to rest as well.

Enrich the soil by adding compost, leaves and whatever else you can find and then let the snow cover insulate the area.

Your Garden will be happier next year because of the work you put in this Fall.

 

 

garden shovel before cleaning and storing for winter
Cleaning tools is an important part of putting your garden to bed.

 

Getting Your Yard Ready For Winter – Part 1

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Getting your yard ready for winter is something every gardener needs to do.

Ahhh, Fall – that wonderful time of the year. The temperatures are dropping and it’s wonderful for working outside.

The leaves start changing colour and just by looking around, you can see everything starting to get ready for the coming Winter.

Now is the time to start tucking your yard in for the Winter.

 

 

The Garden Harvests have slowed down somewhat, but we’re still digging up potatoes, perhaps pulling off the last of the ripe tomatoes and grabbing the squash before the frosts start coming.

It’s time – time to start putting the Garden to bed for the wintertime. Winter is a period of rest. For us Food Gardening fanatics, it’s a time of standing back and gazing upon all those jars of canned goods now sitting on your pantry shelf.

 

Our Cold Room is filling up, not only with surplus jars of canned Tomato Sauce, Green Beans and Beets, but also sacks of Potatoes, Onions and Garlic. We should be well supplied for the entire Winter and well into next Spring.

Time to sit down now and have a bit of a rest. We’ve all earned that extra cup of tea and relax time now. There is still lots to do, but the hurried pace has slowed a bit.

5 Things we do each Fall:

Pick Stuff Up!

We can get a LOT of snow so it is crucial to start picking “things” up. We have a (bad) habit of leaving things out during the Summer.

Shovels, hoes, pitchforks, they can all be found either laying in the Garden or leaned up against various fences depending on where they were used last.

 

 

If we don’t pick things up in the Fall, there is a chance we will not see them again until Spring. Once the snow flies things disappear pretty quick around here. So, we walk around and gather up all our tools.

Clean and Maintain our Tools:

Shovels, hoes and the like will benefit from a good cleaning. Dip a cloth in some used motor oil and wipe your tools with it. This will help keep the tools from rusting. Now is a great time to sharpen shovels and hoes.

Gather up all your garden hoses, irrigation timers and the like. Store your hoses under cover and bring the timers and manifolds into the house to keep them there over Winter.

 

 

Store the yard lighting and ornaments:

If you live in deep snow areas, be sure to gather up all your yard lights. We have a lot of Solar Lights in our yard and I make sure they all get brought up to the house to be stored, at least for awhile.

Sometimes in February, I will put them back out, setting them into the snow. I like to wait until I think the majority of snow has fallen.

With all the snow shoveling we do around our home, I don’t want the extra work of having to dig the solar lights out of the snow!

 

 

Rake the Lawn:

Raking the lawn area to get rid of the dried thatch is a good idea now, if you have the time. Giving the lawn one last mow is also on the list – it will help your lawn get off to a better start next Spring.

Cut back the Perennials:

When your Perennial flowers start dying back, it is a good time to cut them down close to the ground. Some people like to leave this job until the Spring and it certainly can provide some Winter interest to see the heads of grasses or dried Hydrangeas covered with snow.

 

 

Whether you do this job now or in Spring, the steps are the same – cut back your Perennial plants almost to the ground, remove the debris and add it to your Compost pile. Come Spring, these plants will send up new growth and be healthy and blooming within a few months.

Trim any Shrubs that need it. Trim just above a leaf set and if the stems are quite sturdy, you can use these to make a teepee around more fragile Perennials. Just push them into the ground and add lots of leaves or straw to the teepee for extra protection.

In the next post, I’ll concentrate on the Vegetable and Fruit Gardens, as well as compost piles. Pop over here to read the next installment of  Tucking Your Garden in for Winter.

Other Winter posts:

Read here to find out how to properly layer clothing for the winter – and be able to spend more time outside.

Want to learn how to make your garden beautiful, even in winter?

 

Bored Chickens? Put Your Chickens to Work!

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Did you know that bored chickens are unhealthy chickens? Bored chickens fight with one another, pull feathers out and pick and peck at each other.

Bad poultry behaviors often start just because the chickens don’t have enough to do and things like feather picking can really set a chicken back health wise.

Bored Chickens and Chicken Health

And unhealthy chickens can of course, lead to flock illness and fewer (or no) eggs being laid. Sometimes it leads to egg eating, which you don’t want, because once that starts, it is hard to stop them from doing it.

Usually the answer to this is to just let them out of the coop and they will run around chasing and eating bugs.

There other ways to keep your bored chickens busy and that is to put your chickens to work for you! Read on for some ideas for boredom busters for your hens and roosters.

 

Bored chickens need to be kept busy
Click to save to your Pinterest board.

Bored Chickens Need Something to Do!

I mentioned that we do let our girls out to free range and find bugs. But I have a few flower beds and for some reason, that is where they all flock to.

It’s probably because the soil is nice and fluffy and easy for them to scratch at to find bugs like mealworms and other insects to eat.

Next thing I know, they’re ripping leaves with their sharp claws and my nice plants are getting shredded.

I don’t mean they totally destroy my flowerbed, but they do more damage than I like to see.

 

Hens eating lettuce and other greens.
Chickens love eating lettuce and other leafy greens.

The other place my chickens seem to end up is on the stairs, trying to come up to the porch. I do NOT want chickens on my porch, thank you.

Chicken crap on the lawn is one thing, chicken crap on the porch is not allowed!

Temporary Fencing for Bored Chickens

An easy answer to this is T-post and chicken wire or field fencing, which I prefer. It’s sturdier so I don’t seem to need as many T-posts when using it.

We just set up temporary fencing wherever we need it and put the girls in there. Using a wooden fence post already in place or the wall of a building as a starting point for your fencing will reduce the number of T-posts you’d need.

 

Bored chickens can be led to their work area by shaking a feed can.
Lead your chickens to their new work area by shaking a feed can for them.

Early afternoon, after they’ve laid their eggs, I’ll let them out of their coop and into the area I want them to work on. Well before dark, I open up the fencing and they all run back home.

See the temporary fencing on the right in the picture above? Eli and Jeyna have just let the girls out and are bringing them to the work yard.

Have you noticed that chickens like to go home before dusk? They want to be all safe and sound in the henhouse before it gets too dark.

If they don’t want to go back in, I shake a feed can with a bit of feed in there. They quickly get to know that sound and they come running for food.

 

Chickens pecking at the grass covered ground.
Chickens love looking for bugs so let them out to free range.

Here they are helping me to get all the weeds out of a future garden bed.

Bored chickens keeping busy working over a new vegetable garden.
Put your chickens in new garden areas to help break up the dirt and compost.

 

Here, the girls are working over some composted manure in what is now the third strawberry bed.

Bored chickens working in part of a harvested veggie garden.
Hens contained in a part of the harvested veggie garden to work over the soil.

Chickens in the Vegetable Garden

As you harvest areas of your veggie garden, you can run temporary fencing and put your chickens to work. They’ll work on your soil plus they’ll enjoy eating snacks of leftover veggies like lettuce, broccoli, cabbage and pumpkins.

Here, we have put a load of uncomposted horse manure in there. The girls then spent their afternoons breaking up the manure and eating any little seeds they found.

They have powerful feet, and they will break up all that manure till it’s light and fluffy. When you put your bored chickens to work for you, you’ll be surprised what they can do.

 

Bored chickens in a new temporary fenced area to look for bugs.
Temporary fencing makes it easy to make new work areas for chickens.

Another example of temporary fencing strung up between the pig run (on the left) and the permanent chicken run (on the right).

Chickens working over a large compost pile.
Let bored chickens work in your compost piles.

Here they are working on a big compost pile. I just pounded in T-posts and strung the wire right around the big piles we have down by the barn.

When you’ve got several chickens working this hard, they are enjoying themselves! They are getting hours of entertainment from working away.

Compost piles are a great boredom buster for any flock of backyard chickens. And you will get the benefits!

Lots of fluffy airy composted manure that you can add to your veggie and flower beds.

Dust Baths for Chickens

You will find your chickens love to also just lay around in the dirt, and you may see them scratching and throwing the dirt up under their wings.

They are just having what is called a dust bath and the dirt or sand helps them get rid of any mites or other parasites they may have on them.

Inside the chicken coop, make sure your chickens have access to a good size container containing dirt, sand, some diatomaceous earth (de for short) and even some wood ash, if you have a wood stove or firepit.

This will allow them to have a dust bath even in winter or rainy weather.

If you have an old bale of hay, open it up in their coop. Then throw some scratch grains around and you’ll find the hens will work that hay into smaller pieces while looking for the food.

This can then become nice warm bedding on the floor of their chicken coop. Old straw bales will work too!

 

Eggs laid by happy healthy hens. Nine dozen large eggs on a table.
Healthy hens means lots of eggs for you and your family.

Look at this huge bounty of eggs! The smallest eggs are from chickens who was just starting to lay.

The huge egg is likely from a chicken who has been thru a molt, which happens once a year.

After they molt, they will start laying eggs again. Once they start, they may lay fewer eggs than the previous year.

However, the eggs will probably all be larger than they were before the molt.

 

Chickens love to work and can help YOU. Here's how to keep chickens busy and productive. #chickens #backyardchickens #chicks #homesteading
Click to save to your Pinterest board for later.

 

So, if you’re thinking of getting some chickens, start thinking of some easy ways that you can put your chickens to work, offsetting some of the work you’d have to do.

Better they do your work for you!

Treats for Bored Chickens

Other treats that will help bored chickens include chicken toys such as:

  • a chicken swing –  like this one
  • make a DIY toy like this cabbage tetherball that hangs with twine (a GREAT way to keep chickens busy in winter)
  • Hang a few old cds where the chickens can play with them, they love shiny things!
  • A chicken jungle gym is a great way to keep your flock entertained!

 

Remember that bored chickens can lead to general unhealthiness of your backyard flock. By implementing some (or all) of these ideas to keep your flock busy and hard at work, you can greatly reduce any chance of your hens getting bored.

It’s important to keep your flock happy and healthy! So, put them to work and let them help you around your yard and property! 

You will not only benefit from  the actual work they can do, you will have happier and healthier chickens that will lay eggs for you on almost a daily basis!

Want to read about how we raise meat birds from chicks to 8 pounds….in just 8 weeks? Meat birds are a great way to put a lot of meat in your freezer in short time.

Bored Chickens are Unhappy Chickens! Follow these tips to keep your hens busy.

More Chicken Related Content:

Ever wondered about Straight Run Chickens and when you might want them?

All you need to know about Heritage Chickens for a backyard flock!

Clucking Perfect Gifts for Chicken Lovers!

Answers to chicken questions beginners need to know!

Easy ways to tell the difference between hens and roosters!

 

 

originally published 2011; updated July 2022

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