Plant Garlic This Fall and Harvest It Next July

Most of the garden is winding down right now. The tomatoes are getting leggy, the squash has powdery mildew, and you’re probably spending more time pulling spent plants than putting new ones in. This is exactly when you should be planting garlic.

Garlic runs on the opposite schedule from most of the garden. You plant it in fall, it grows roots before winter, sits quietly through the cold months, and then comes back to life early in spring. By July, you’re digging up full heads. Here’s how to do it right.

When do you actually plant garlic in the fall?

I wouldn’t get too hung up on one exact planting date. What matters more is giving the cloves time to grow roots before winter really sets in. A common target is roughly 4 to 6 weeks before the ground freezes hard, though your timing will depend quite a bit on where you live. The Old Farmer’s Almanac gives a useful backstop: wait until after the fall equinox in late September rather than planting while the soil is still warm.

In colder northern zones, roughly 3 to 5, that often means late September through October. In zones 6 and 7, mid-October into November is common. Gardeners in zone 8 and warmer may not plant until November or even December.

If you’re not sure when your area usually gets its first hard freeze, look it up by ZIP code before you plant. Local weather matters a lot more here than a date printed on a seed packet.

Seed garlic vs. grocery-store garlic

You technically can plant garlic from the supermarket, but I wouldn’t make it my first choice. Some grocery-store garlic has been treated to slow sprouting so it sits on a shelf longer, and more importantly, you usually don’t know what variety you’re getting or whether it suits your climate. Seed garlic is simply garlic grown and sold specifically for planting, normally labeled by variety, which makes it much easier to choose the right type for where you live.

There are two main groups. Hardneck garlic handles cold winters well and usually produces larger, strongly flavored cloves arranged around a stiff central stalk. It also sends up a curly flower stalk called a scape in early summer, which you can cut and eat.

Softneck garlic produces more cloves per bulb, stores longer, and does especially well in milder climates. It’s also the type used for garlic braids.

If you live somewhere with cold winters, hardneck is usually the easier choice. If your winters are mild, softneck may be better suited to your garden.

If you don’t have a local source for seed garlic, SeedsNow is one place to check. They carry both hardneck and softneck varieties, so just make sure you’re choosing one suited to your winters. Order sooner rather than later, since popular varieties can sell out early.

Why did my garlic grow as one round with no cloves?

If your garlic has ever come out of the ground looking like one big round onion instead of a head full of cloves, lack of cold exposure may be the reason. Most garlic varieties need some cold exposure to form a well-developed head of separate cloves, a process called vernalization. Hardneck varieties generally need more chilling than softneck types.

Without enough cold for the variety you’re growing, the plant may grow perfectly healthy leaves but end up forming one solid, undivided bulb called a round instead of dividing into a head full of cloves. This is more likely to happen in warm climates where winter temperatures don’t stay cold for long.

If you live in zone 8 or warmer and you’re growing a variety that needs more chill than your winter provides, you can give the garlic that cold period yourself before planting. Put your seed garlic in the refrigerator for around 6 to 8 weeks at roughly 35 to 40°F, keeping it dry and away from apples and other ripening fruit while it chills.

Then plant according to your normal fall or early-winter schedule. If you live somewhere with consistently cold winters, you usually don’t need to worry about this step. The garlic gets its cold treatment naturally in the ground.

How deep and how far apart do you plant the cloves?

Start with the bed. Garlic does best in loose, well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter, so if your soil needs help, work in a couple inches of compost before planting. The biggest thing to avoid is soggy soil, since garlic sitting wet all winter is much more likely to rot.

Wait until you’re close to planting before breaking the heads apart. Separate the bulb into individual cloves and leave the papery skin on each one.

Use the biggest cloves for planting, since your largest healthy cloves have the best chance of producing large bulbs. The tiny inner cloves are better saved for cooking.

Plant each clove with the pointed end facing up and the flatter root end facing down, about 2 inches deep for most gardens. Space the cloves around 6 inches apart, a little closer for softneck if you’re short on space, with rows about 12 to 18 inches apart.

Once everything is planted, add mulch. In cold climates I like a fairly generous layer of seedless straw or shredded leaves, around 5 to 8 inches to start, which settles down over winter. Mulch protects the cloves from repeated freezing and thawing, keeps them from being pushed toward the soil surface, and makes spring weed control much easier. If your winters are mild, you don’t need quite as much.

What goes wrong, and how do you avoid it?

Garlic is pretty forgiving, but a handful of mistakes are worth avoiding. Planting too early is the common one. Put garlic into warm soil too soon and it may send up a lot of green growth before winter. A little green showing isn’t necessarily a disaster, but you don’t want a foot of top growth going into freezing weather.

In cold climates, don’t skimp on mulch either, since repeated freeze-and-thaw cycles can push cloves upward and expose them to cold and drying. Water matters more once spring arrives. Garlic likes steady moisture while it’s actively growing and forming bulbs, and around an inch of water per week is a reasonable target if you’re not getting enough rain.

Toward the end of the season, though, back off. Once the lower leaves start turning brown and harvest is getting close, stop watering roughly three to four weeks before you plan to dig. Constantly wet soil at that stage can stain the wrappers and encourage rot.

If you’re growing hardneck garlic, don’t forget the scapes. You’ll usually see them in early summer as curly green stalks coming out of the center of the plant. Cut them off once they’ve curled so the plant keeps putting energy into the bulb, then eat them. They’re great chopped into eggs, stir-fries, pasta, or blended into pesto.

The July payoff

Fall-planted garlic is usually ready sometime in July, though colder areas may run a little later. Don’t harvest based on the calendar alone. Watch the leaves.

As garlic gets close to maturity, the bottom leaves begin turning brown while the upper leaves stay green. Once roughly the lower third to half have browned, I’d start checking the bulbs. Use a garden fork or shovel to loosen the soil beside the plant and lift gently rather than yanking the stalk.

After harvest, the garlic needs to cure before storage. Hang the plants in small bunches or spread them somewhere shady, dry, and well ventilated for about three to four weeks. Don’t wash the bulbs beforehand, just brush away loose soil once it dries.

When the stalks, roots, and outer wrappers are completely dry, trim the roots and cut the stalk an inch or two above the bulb. Properly cured hardneck garlic generally stores for several months, and softneck usually lasts longer, often well into winter under good conditions.

Before you eat all of it, set aside a few of your biggest, healthiest heads for next year’s seed garlic. Over time, saving garlic that performs well in your own garden gives you planting stock increasingly suited to your conditions.

Ready to put some in the ground?

If you’ve never grown garlic before, it’s one of my favorite crops to recommend starting with. It doesn’t take much space, it doesn’t need constant attention, and most of the work happens during a cool fall afternoon when the rest of the garden is already slowing down.

Find a good variety for your climate, check your local frost timing, and get the cloves planted before the ground freezes. If you live somewhere with mild winters, start thinking about that refrigerator chill ahead of planting time.

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Their work was published recently in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy a follow-up to the author’s previous research in Applied and Environmental Microbiology which conclusively demonstrated that garlic concentrate was effective in inhibiting the growth of C. jejuni bacteria.

Garlic is probably nature’s most potent food. It is one of the reasons people who eat the Mediterranean diet live such long healthy lives. Garlic is also a powerful performer in the research lab.

“This work is very exciting to me because it shows that this compound has the potential to reduce disease-causing bacteria in the environment and in our food supply,” said Xiaonan Lu, a postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the paper.

One of the most interesting of the recent findings is that garlic increases the overall antioxidant levels of the body. Scientifically known as Allium sativa, garlic has been famous throughout history for its ability to fight off viruses and bacteria. Louis Pasteur noted in 1858 that bacteria died when they were doused with garlic. From the Middle Ages on, garlic has been used to treat wounds, being ground or sliced and applied directly to wounds to inhibit the spread of infection. The Russians refer to garlic as Russian penicillin.

“This is the first step in developing or thinking about new intervention strategies,” saif Michael Konkel, a co-author who has been researching Campylobacter jejuni for 25 years.

“Campylobacter is simply the most common bacterial cause of food-borne illness in the United States and probably the world,” Konkel said. Some 2.4 million Americans are affected every year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with symptoms including diarrhea, cramping, abdominal pain and fever.

The bacteria also are responsible for triggering nearly one-third of the cases of a rare paralyzing disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Diallyl disulfide is an organosulfur compound derived from garlic and a few other genus Allium plants. It is produced during the decomposition of allicin, which is released upon crushing garlic

Lu and his colleagues looked at the ability of diallyl sulfide to kill the bacterium when it is protected by a slimy biofilm that makes it 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than the free floating bacterial cell. They found the compound can easily penetrate the protective biofilm and kill bacterial cells by combining with a sulfur-containing enzyme, subsequently changing the enzyme’s function and effectively shutting down cell metabolism.

The researchers found the diallyl sulfide was as effective as 100 times as much of the antibiotics erythromycin and ciprofloxacin and often would work in a fraction of the time.

Two previous works published last year by Lu and WSU colleagues in Applied and Environmental Microbiology and Analytical Chemistry found diallyl sulfide and other organosulfur compounds effectively kill important food-borne pathogens, such as Listeria monocytogenes and Escherichia coli O157:H7.

“Diallyl sulfide may be useful in reducing the levels of the Campylobacterin the environment and to clean industrial food processing equipment, as the bacterium is found in a biofilm in both settings,” Konkel said.

“Diallyl sulfide could make many foods safer to eat,” said Barbara Rasco, a co-author on all three recent papers and Lu’s advisor for his doctorate in food science. “It can be used to clean food preparation surfaces and as a preservative in packaged foods like potato and pasta salads, coleslaw and deli meats.”

“This would not only extend shelf life but it would also reduce the growth of potentially bad bacteria,” she said.

The natural substance could also be derived without artificially introducing harmful chemicals to disruptive its disease-reducing abilities.

Ironically, many researchers think that antibiotics may be just one of several factors that contribute to intestinal blockage in young children.

(Source)

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Garlic

Garlic is an amazing superfood that can dramatically alter your inner ecology with its antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal properties. Quite simply, it helps safely remove all those little critters that are destroying your digestive system.

In fact, Washington State University has confirmed that garlic is far more effective than pharmaceutical antibiotics in fighting a common bacteria known as campylobacter bacterium, which currently infects 2.4 million Americans per year.

Keeping your gut clear of these harmful bacteria will go a long ways to healing your digestive system.

Coconut kefir

Coconut kefir is somewhat of a lesser-known superfood, but is powerful nonetheless.

Coconut kefir is the simple process of using young coconut water and fermenting it to a state that leaves it teeming with billions of beneficial microorganisms. These friendly bacteria help balance your inner ecosystem, which in turn facilitates digestion, nutrient absorption, and toxin removal.

Bottom line, if you want to clean up your gut, repopulating it with beneficial bacteria is a requirement. Taking an ounce of kefir in the morning, at meals, and before bed is a great way to start.

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is essentially fermented cabbage, which contains a vast array of nutrients and a hardy strain of probiotics, and does an exceptional job of cleaning and ‘furnishing’ your gut with beneficial bacteria so that it can heal and work efficiently again.

Add it as a side to any meal, or get creative and incorporate it into dishes where you would normally add vegetables.

Aloe vera

Aloe vera is a highly medicinal plant, and most of the benefits seem to come from the gel.

Aloe gel contains active compounds that help temper inflammation and block bacteria from infecting various areas of our body, including our digestive tract. They are also believed to help regenerate cells for faster healing times, which is vitally important in healing your gut after significant damage has occurred.

Aloe gel has also showed promise in healing gastric ulcers. According to a study in the World Journal of Gastroenterology in April 2006, when given internally, aloe gel reduced gastric inflammation and generated ulcer healing in mice.

Sangre de drago

Sangre de Drago is a latex-like red sap that comes from the Croton species of tree in the Amazon rainforests. This medicinal sap has been used for a variety of ailments, including ulcers in the stomach and intestines.

The two main phytochemicals responsible for its healing properties are an alkaloid known as Taspine (documented as anti-inflammatory, anti-tumorous, and antiviral) and a lignan known as Dimethylcedrusine, which plays a central role in sangre de drago’s wound healing capabilities.

When smeared onto a sterile plate and allowed to dry, then doused with E. coli bacteria, it was found that the bacteria promptly died in the presence of the sangre de drago.

A clean gut can create a clean bill of health

Eighty percent of our immunity, and conversely, where 80 percent of things go wrong, starts in the gut. It is perhaps the most important factor to consider when deciding to clean up your health.

Start with these five superfoods, and continue to add to your arsenal in order to keep your gut free of damaging pathogens, and full of beneficial bacteria.

My gut says go for it.

Sources for this article include:

http://news.wsu.edu

http://ajpgi.physiology.org/content/279/1/G192.full

http://www.rain-tree.com/sangre.htm#.Ucifa-BQPTQ

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With a diet enriched with these foods, individuals allergic to spring can find comfort and relief

Citrus fruits. There are several studies that prove the power of vitamin C and what better way to get a load of C but with citrus fruits. Oranges, lemons and grapefruit, among others, are rich sources of this vitamin.

Red grapes. One of the most troublesome effects of allergies is the inflammation that comes with it. Eating foods rich in antioxidants can help lessen inflammation that may occur in the entire body. What antioxidants do is work for the protection of the cells from oxidative damage. Such may cause several diseases. Moreover, the red grapes skin is also rich in resveratrol which is equally effective for anti-inflammation.

Broccoli. A blocked up sinus can be relieved by eating broccoli. But that is not the only benefit to this produce. It is also enriched with vitamin C. As a matter of fact, according to researchers, a cup of raw broccoli contains up to 80mg of the vitamin.

Collard greens Collard greens contain phytochemicals, specifically carotenoids. This component is well known for easing allergic reactions. To further boost the effects of carotenoids contained in collard greens, allergy stricken individuals should consume the vegetable with a fat source.

Nuts. Nuts are filled with magnesium and vitamin E. Magnesium can work against wheezing that often comes with asthma. Vitamin E, on the other hand, can help improve immunity. This vitamin also works to aid the body’s protection against free radicals, thereby preventing inflammation and damage on the tissue.

Apples. According to a Crete diet study, individuals who eat apples regularly have greater chances of protection from allergies and asthma. This fruit contains quercetin which is a kind of flavonoid that is effective for use against inflammation. The peel from apple is also rich in antioxidants, specifically polyphenols which protect the cells from damage.

Fish. Fish is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids known for their anti-inflammatory properties. Omega-3s can also help improve the immune system so the body can better fight off allergies.

Onions and garlic. Onions and garlic are also rich in quercetin. As a matter of fact, they can act much like how an antihistamine does which make them very effective when incorporated to an anti-spring allergy diet.

There are plenty of food solutions around to compound the nasty effects of spring allergies. The best part is these are all natural solutions and they can be enjoyed as food as well. Individuals who are prone to suffering from spring allergies should ensure that their diet is packed with these eight kinds of food to better protect themselves and avoid suffering from all the uncomfortable and troublesome allergic reactions the season brings.

Sources for this article include

http://healthland.time.com

http://www.mnn.com

http://www.organicgardening.com

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