Growing Garlic At Home - Garlic Is Tasty & Healthy

GARLIC is a wonder food - it adds a savoury flavour to a variety of dishes, such as fish, pizza, soup, meat, salads, pasta and even rice, and it is packed with healthy goodness.

Garlic's health benefits include the ability to lower high blood pressure and the risk of illness and infections. It may also cut the risks of heart disease and cancer. It is most beneficial when eaten raw.

The garlic plant has an underground storage head, made up of about 12 separate cloves or bulbs. Unlike onions, which are made up of numerous leaf layers, a garlic clove is made up of a single leaf base.

Called a "stinking rose" by the ancient Greeks, it is a member of the Allium sativum family, a cousin of onions, chives and leeks. Garlic has a powerful, spicy flavour when raw, which mellows considerably when it is cooked. Cooking reduces the plant's benefits. Raw or cooked, however, garlic is known for its strong odour.

When the bulb is crushed or chewed, one of its sulphur compounds, alliin, becomes allicin, the chemical responsible for the typical garlic smell, as well as its health benefits. That smell often lingers on the breath after eating garlic; chewing fresh parsley or a pinch of fennel seeds helps to counteract this. A drop or two of peppermint essential oil on the tongue will also help eliminate bad breath.

These days, the health benefits of garlic are so sought-after, the plant is often consumed in tablet form to promote good health.

Indeed, Reader's Digest's The Healing Power of Vitamins, Minerals and Herbs reports that consuming garlic may prevent hardening of the aorta, the artery that carries oxygenated blood from the heart. This hardening occurs naturally with age. In one study, 200 people took either garlic supplements or a placebo daily for two years. It was found that the aortas of the 70-year-olds in the garlic group were as supple as those of the 55-year-olds who did not take the supplement.

According to the website of Britain's Garlic Information Centre, garlic is "the only antibiotic that can actually kill infecting bacteria and at the same time protect the body from the poisons that are causing the infection".

It also reports that garlic reduces the chances of pre-eclampsia in pregnancy, a serious condition in which blood pressure increases dangerously. Garlic also boosts the foetus's weight during pregnancy, resulting in a heavier baby, it says.

Garlic contains vitamins A, B1, B2 and C, making it helpful in preventing colds and flu. For many years garlic was combined with ginger to treat or prevent influenza. Ginger is a knotted underground stem. Used in sweet and savoury dishes, it is known as a good remedy for digestive problems such as mild indigestion, flatulence, nausea and vomiting.

To store garlic, keep it in a dry, well-ventilated place. However, do not put it in the fridge, as this might cause mould. Planting garlic is easy - and it can be grown successfully in a home garden or backyard. To plant, choose the largest cloves and sow them root end down, standing erect, about 25 millimetres deep. Plant the cloves about 100 millimetres apart.

Garlic prefers growing in cold weather. When the weather is wet towards harvest time, consider lifting them a bit earlier and drying them under cover, or the outer parchment may rot. The better the leaf growth before bulbing starts, the bigger the bulb and the cloves will be.

Cloves planted in early winter will have longer exposure to the cold and will respond to the lengthening days more quickly than those planted later. However, early planting also carries the risk of the cloves rotting in the cold, wet soil.