—  Garlic is known as every man’s herb because it is easy to grow and has so many uses.

Eating garlic lowers cholesterol, triglyceride levels, and blood pressure. It also adds important nutrients to our diet, including calcium, iron, potassium, vitamin B and C, plus phosphorous. It is also used as an anti-fungal and antibiotic.

Garlic's health properties include healing sore throat, cold, cough, flu and other winter ailments. One method for making cough syrup is to pour a quart of boiling water on a pound of sliced, fresh garlic and steep it for 12 hours. Then strain and add honey before taking a tablespoonful.

During the 17th Century plague, only those who self-administered garlic were able to avoid becoming victims. At one time, garlic was called Russian penicillin.

The short version of how to plant garlic is to separate the head into individual cloves and plant each clove 2-inches deep in loose soil. It will grow best with 6 hours of sun a day. If your soil is hard clay, grow garlic in a raised bed.

Each clove of garlic has a flat end and a pointy end. Plant each clove, flat end down, 8 inches apart, giving each head 4 inches to grow.

Water immediately after planting to settle the soil and again if there is no rain for weeks at a time.

In four-to-eight weeks, green sprouts will emerge. These can be snipped off and chopped to use in salad and to garnish cream soups. When freezing temperatures arrive, the green tops will freeze back, but they will re-emerge.

After the first freeze, mulch with pine straw, wheat straw or other loose material. Grass clippings can be mixed in. Never use a pile of whole leaves as mulch because they compact and stay too wet during the winter.

In the spring, the garlic will continue to grow but the cloves will not form until June.

You will know that you are harvesting too early if the bulb you pull up looks more like an onion than garlic.

There are 300 varieties of garlic. Within all those varieties there are two types — soft neck (Sativum) and hard neck (Ophioscorodon). Hard neck garlic types tolerate damp soil, and the ones to look for are: Purple Stripe, Porcelain and Rocambole.

Hard neck garlic is the original kind of garlic and it puts up a beautiful stalk with a seed capsule at the top.

These scapes are removed to encourage the garlic head underground to continue growing. Scapes (or spathes) can be run through a food processor with olive oil and salt to make a dip, spread or pasta sauce.

Soft neck, hybrid, garlic will not send up a seed head. Grow soft neck if you want to make garlic braids since the stems are easier to handle. Soft neck types include: Artichoke and Silverskin.

The artichoke varieties are the most tolerant of soil type and growing conditions.

Elephant garlic is actually a Chinese leek, one of garlic’s close cousins.

When you buy garlic seeds by mail, you will receive heads of garlic that you have to separate into cloves before planting.

If you are ready to try garlic growing, pick up a few heads at a local farmers’ market or produce stand so you know you are buying varieties that grow in your area.

The big box stores sell garlic from China and we have never tried to grow it. We plant 200 seeds every year, using the best of the current year’s heads and buying new varieties to try.  

Mail and Internet sources: The Garlic Store www.thegarlicstore.com and (800) 854-7219; Burpee Seeds, www.burpee.com and (800) 333-5808; and, Gourmet Garlic Gardens offers a sampler assortment, www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com and (325) 348-3049.