Garlic
Garlic Family Name: Liliaceae
Botanical Name(s): Allium sativum
Popular Name(s): Garlic, Lashan, Rasonam, Lashuna, Veluthulli, Ugragandha, Mlecchagandha, Lesan.
Parts Used: Bulb and Oil.
Habitat: It is a native of southwest Siberia and southern Europe.
Description: The leaves are long, narrow and flat like grass. The bulb (the only part eaten) is of a compound nature, consisting of numerous bulblets, known technically as 'cloves,' grouped together between the membranous scales and enclosed within a whitish skin, which holds them as in a sac.
Uses: Garlic is often applied to indolent tumors, ulcerated surfaces and wounds. A poultice of the bulb is used for scrofulous sores and ringworm. A clove of Garlic when introduced into the ear passage gives relief of earache. It is locally used in sciatica, paralysis and neuralgic pains. Raw Garlic juice is inhaled in whooping cough and pulmonary tuberculosis.
Contents
Materia Medica
According to traditional Materia Medica:
Botanical Name(s):
Popular Name(s):
Description:
Uses:
How To Grow
Garlic Varieties
Garlic flavors range from the mild Elephant Garlic (which is related to leeks, and not a true garlic), to hot and spicy varieties such as Chesnok Red. In addition to a wide range of flavors, there are also two types of garlic - hardneck and softneck. Use their general attributes listed below to determine which type you would like to grow before acquiring your initial stock. Since garlic readily reproduces, once you have an established crop, you can easily save your own cloves for subsequent years.
SN = Softneck HN = Hardneck
- SN Garlic natively stores longer
- HN Garlic tends to do better in colder climates
- Some SN garlic produces many small cloves that may require more peeling to use or process
- HN Garlic produces 'flower' scapes that are used for cooking, and that should be cut off of the plant in order to ensure larger bulbs
- SN Garlic is the type of garlic used in making garlic braids
Planting
The two main planting times is mid-autumn, when the ground has not yet frozen, and early spring as soon as the ground can be worked. Generally speaking, planting in autumn will give you larger bulbs, but the closer to a 'long season, warm' climate that one gets, the less this matters.
Note: If the paper-like wrappers have mold on them, it is best to just eat the garlic and get new planting stock. If this is not an option, one can peel the wrapper off of the cloves and soak the cloves in a 10% solution of bleach (one part household bleach to 9 parts water) for 10 minutes. Let air dry before planting. Be sure to not recontaminate your garlic after soaking.
- Wait until you are ready to plant before separating your garlic cloves.
- Remove wrappers or not, as is your liking
- Plant 3 to 4 inches deep - In very cold climates, plant an inch deeper.
- Plant 'pointy side up'
- If you are growing in rows, plant about 5 - 6 inches apart - enough space to where there will be about 1 inch between the mature bulbs
- If you are growing in a polyculture, plant a small group using the same spacing, maybe growing in a small ring or triangle.
- Water deeply
- Some very cold climate people mulch their garlic
- Garlic does not like fertilization during the summer - too much nitrogen equals lots of leaf growth and lest bulb build up
- Decreasing water in mid- to late summer also helps the garlic to bulb up
Harvesting
Garlic Scapes If you are growing hardneck garlic, the 'flower scapes' will first appear on short stems and be pointing skyward. The stem portion will continue to elongate. At some point the stem will curl into a circle. This is the point that you will need to remove the scape. You do not need to remove all of its stem - but you do need to remove all of the bud. (The scape does not really contain a flower. The bud is filled with tiny, immature bulbs called bulbills. One can actually plant them, but it may take a long time to get a good sized bulb from one.)
- Harvest when the lower 1/3 to 1/2 of the leaves are yellow to brown, but while the leaves on the tops are green
- If possible, harvest on a dry day, and several days after the last rain
- Do not pull the garlic out of the ground by the stem, but dig around and under it
- You may eat the garlic raw or cooked at this time; however, if you wish to store the garlic, you will need to cure them
Curing & Storing
Curing
- Do not wash or wet the garlic once it is out of the ground
- Brush off as much of the dirt as easily comes off; however, you do not need to be fanatical about it
- Do not trim the leaves
- Dry in bunches of 5 or 6 plants out of direct sun for several weeks. One way of doing this would be to tie a half dozen plants together and hang in a barn or covered porch.
- Air circulation is key
- If you start getting mold, remove that whole bunch (even if only one shows mold) and either use them right away, or remove skins and otherwise preserve them (in canned or frozen spaghetti sauce is one way to use a significant amount of garlic). The key is to not contaminate any of the other bulbs
Storing
- After curing, garlic will last about 6 months in a cool, dry place
- Do not store in the refrigerator - the cool temperatures signal the garlic to start putting down roots and sprout
- Freezing garlic
- Freeze whole bulbs or cloves (still in wrappers) wrapped in plastic wrap or in freezer bags
- Puree or chop with olive or other oil and freeze in ice trays - when frozen pop out and put in a freezer bag
- Slice thin and dehydrate
- Pickle or add to a pickled vegetable mix
Videos
Podcasts
References
See Also
- First aid
- Herbal medicine
- Medicinal herbs
- Herbalist
- Complementary medicine
- Health
- Diseases
- Herb videos
- Health videos
- Western Botanicals
Further Reading
External Links
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