Benefits of Eating Garlic

It's that time of year to plant one of my favorite spices, garlic. Garlic is considered nature's antibiotic. It is very well studied and has many papers published on it's health benefits. Garlic's health benefits include:

• Improves heart health, including reversing early stage heart disease by removing plaque build up
• Reduced risk of cancer including stomach, colon, esophagus, pancreas, and breast.
• Helps control blood pressure
• Is antimicrobial, antiviral and antifungal properties which helps prevent colds, infections and increases recovery time when sick
• May help prevent Alzheimers/dementia
• Help regulate blood sugar
• Increases metabolism which can help with weight loss

Garlic is one of the easiest plants to grow. If you've never done it before, you should try it. You'll never buy grocery store garlic again. Take a good quality garlic bulb from a farmer's market or purchase online from a seed site. Break the bulb into cloves. Stick each clove into soil vertically with the side that was attached to the clove on the bottom. Then cover each bulb with soil. Garlic can be planted directly in the ground, in a raised bed or a container. Garlic doesn't need a large area to grow. Mine grow in 4' x 4' raised beds. I also plant them a few inches apart with rows about 4" apart. Once planted, you don't have to do anything else. They just grow on their own. The big thing is to make sure there is good drainage to prevent the cloves from rotting. Partial shade to full sun is also important. In the northeast plant garlic in the fall. I usually try to do it around Columbus Day or within a few weeks after. In the spring/early summer, the garlic will grow garlic scapes. They are a shoot that grows out of the middle of the plant with a flower at the end. When the garlic starts growing scapes, cut them off down towards the leaves. You can eat them raw, cooked or pickle them. They taste like garlic only milder. Cut them early, otherwise they get tough. Cutting them also directs energy of the plant to grow bigger garlic bulbs. Harvest garlic when the top few leaves start turning brown. Usually sometime in July. Just dig down in the soil around the plant and gently pull up as you loosen the soil. Then all you have to do is dry them before storing. I leave them on a cookie sheet and when I get around to it, I cut the stem off, brush off the dirt and put the garlic bulbs in a brown paper bag in a cupboard where it's dry and dark. You know garlic is fresh when you cut a clove and your fingers get covered in garlic oil. Challenge: Eat more garlic. Take it slow though if you are not used to it. It's pretty potent and could cause digestive issues. Raw garlic has the most benefits. Crush or chop it and let it sit for about 5 - 15 minutes. That helps activate the beneficial allicin and allow it to be better absorbed by the body. I use garlic in soups, stews, roasted vegetables, salad dressings. I also like pickled garlic from local farmer's markets. Read the labels though. Some makers put sugar in it and can be really sweet. I don't like those. The kind I like the best is Habanero Pickled Garlic from a local cider mill, Fly Creek Cider Mill. That one doesn't have any sugar and is a little spicy. Resources: https://draxe.com/nutrition/garlic/ https://health.clevelandclinic.org/6-surprising-ways-garlic-boosts-your-health https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265853#uses https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7402177/ #ads More Garlic Resources