it's a great early season crop and when eaten mostly raw keeps the garlic flavor. if you cook it longer it will taste more like a cooked green onion. my favorite way to eat it is right out of the ground. garlic and green onion in a perfect combination. for more blanched white area plant your cloves down deeper than normal. the larger the cloves planted the larger the stalk.
Yummy! I love green garlic, just picked some yesterday to go in a salad. Our walking onions go really well with the green garlic.
yes, it is good pretty much any time after it starts growing up until it starts getting a top/scapes on it, but depends upon the variety. above is a hardnecked garlic. if you let that go too long the stem will get too hard... i have yet to get my garlic planted for next year. most of what i have been picking as green garlic these past few years is extra plants i'm trying to remove before they take over. i think i have a few more seasons back there to munch on. hard to remove it all from the place i scattered it many years ago. was a mistake i won't repeat.
I do this too. Because I never manage to grow enough normal garlic. I grow that amongst flowers. Garlic chives can be a substitute too.