One of the staples in the Hunt kitchen is garlic.When a recipe calls for a clove of garlic, I frequently shake my head in disbelief and think, “Who does that?” as I drop in 4 cloves… I can’t be the only one who does this, right?
That being said, aside from its’ notable role as a vampire repellant, it is also highly useful for keeping the nasty bugs in your garden at bay as a natural insect repellant. And it’s good for us, being used for many years for it’s antibacterial and antiviral properties; some studies even indicate that it can aid high blood pressure, digestion, and maybe even has certain cancer fighting properties. Even if none of that were true, I still want my kitchen stocked with it, because I love Tracy’s Cream of Roasted Garlic soup. Yum!
Aside from all of the culinary uses that garlic sees in the Hunt kitchen, we personally use it medicinally in a homeopathic means, and in our garden. This year, when noticing that our sweet potato and squash vines were being eaten, I filled my Vitamix halfway up with garlic cloves and pureed it on the smoothie setting. I strained the juice into a spray bottle and spritzed the leaves of the plants being eaten. No more bug bites! I dried the remaining pulp in the smoker, and we had smoked garlic powder to add to our spice cabinet, it was fantastic! Also, when Iain was very small, he was plagued with ever worsening ear infections. After researching and learning about the cyclical nature of antibiotics and ear infections, I decided to quit giving him antibiotics and treat his next ear infection with garlic infused oil. It worked, and after helping him restore his gut flora, he has been my healthiest child, so we have continued to treat the rare ear infection with garlic oil!
Growing garlic is easy here in South Texas. You just separate the bulb and plant the cloves an inch to two inches deep. You’re supposed to plant it before the first frost, I’m laughing as I type that, but we actually did get two nights of bonafide freezing weather here in December. And my little sprouts braved the frigid temperatures with ease! The greens were just starting to droop a little, but we got some drizzly weather, and they sprung right back up with the little bit of run off from the garage roof.
We will follow up with pictures from the harvest, but we are actually enjoying the benefits of home grown garlic right now: did you know that they entire plant is edible? Most people only eat the bulbs, but the greens are also quite delicious, as well as the scapes (which are the flowering stalks of the mature plant). We don’t have any scapes on our young plants yet, but we have cut several young green shoots to add to our eggs, mix in with soft cheeses, and toss in with our sautéed veggies.