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Never Buy Garlic Again! Here's How We Grow & Store It · Non-Toxic Living

• 0:00
  Garlic, for over 7,000 years, it's been celebrated as one of the most powerful medicinal herbs you can utilize for healing in your body from heart health to immune health, antiviral, anti-carcinogenic effects, it's all in there.
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  Let's learn how to plant it, grow it, and harvest it on this sweltering 100 degree day.
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  We're gonna make this powerful and quick.
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  I can't wait for you to tune in today on Non-Toxic Living, Garden Edition.
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  So where and when do you plant garlic?
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  You can plant garlic just about everywhere.
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  It's a great companion plant.
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  It only competes with things like beans and peas, maybe asparagus, sage, but for the most part, it's a wonderful plant.
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  You can plant anywhere.
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  I mix it in everywhere.
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  Those sulfur strong compounds can deter pests like aphids and other non-beneficial bugs that can injure your plants.
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  So when do you plant?
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  Not now in the sweltering hundred degree day.
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  This is when we start harvesting and we're gonna talk about how to harvest.
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  It isn't a time.
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  But the plant tells you when it's ready to harvest.
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  But again, when do you plant it and how do you plant it?
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  You plant it in the fall.
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  And how you plant it is about two to three inches deep.
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  So I took all these boxes and I literally put garlic all over them.
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  And I got a variety of sizes of my garlic, but I harvested it correctly before it started to expand and break apart.
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  And your plant actually tells you the best time to harvest.
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  Let me show you what that looks like.
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  You wanna harvest garlic not by the time of year.
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  It is typically around July for most environments, but you wanna check out the plant itself and it'll tell you.
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  When it grows, these leaves are putting sleeves around the garlic bulb, which protects it, especially for harvesting and storing and drying.
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  So you wanna look at the plant and the plant will tell you.
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  When you see the bottom three
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  or four leaves start to turn brown and even fall off like this, that's when you know you need to harvest it.
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  If you let it stay too much longer, it'll start separating and it won't be good garlic anymore.
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  You can break it apart and plant it for next year.
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  And those small seeds can be used for planting.
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  You probably won't get a big bulb from it, but nothing's ever wasted when you're gardening.
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  You can use everything.
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  If these go to seed,
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  They'll literally put seeds around and grow more garlic.
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  You can eat these garlic scapes, even fine restaurants use them.
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  But let's get back to harvesting.
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  We can look at this next plant and we can see that there's one, two, three leaves that are already brown and falling off.
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  We know this is ready to be harvested.
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  In most gardens, you want to use a fork to pop it up.
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  But with my garden, the soil is so loose, you can literally pull them out.
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  And then you check out that beautiful garlic bulb.
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  And what I like to do is knock off most of the dirt right back where I took it from, because there's all kinds of special microorganisms that I wanna leave inside the soil.
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  These peppers aren't doing too well.
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  Again, record high heat here in Utah, 108 degrees or something like that yesterday, over a hundred today.
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  So now let's look at how to dry, which will be easy here in Utah, process and store these garlic bulbs to give you garlic all year, and which ones to keep for planting in the fall.
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  I'm sweating like crazy, let's go into the shade together and learn how to do that.
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  And when I say I planted everywhere, I put it in my flower beds.
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  I put garlic everywhere so that I can have a huge harvest.
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  I live here on a mountain, so I need to find every spot that I can to grow garlic.
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  So I have enough garlic to share and provide for my family.
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  And here's some garlic that I missed.
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  This one's already dried out.
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  I'm just going to leave it until next year.
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  Hopefully it'll produce some nice garlic bulbs.
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  This one, I'm going to pull it.
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  It's really small.
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  It's going to be like one or two cloves, but.
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  Still worth harvesting.
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  And then here's another one.
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  I'm not going to leave that one either.
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  I'm going to pop that one out, get a couple cloves.
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  Look, it already started to split.
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  and grow other cloves, I left it in a little too long.
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  That's what starts to happen.
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  The first step in processing this freshly harvested garlic is that we need to dry it out.
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  When you dry it out, that'll allow it to store properly.
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  If you have it wet and it's not dried out, it'll grow mold and mycotoxins, which are dangerous to your body, even though this is antifungal and antibacterial, it'll still grow mold and you can't have that.
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  So we need to dry it out.
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  And one of the best and funnest ways to dry out your garlic is to braid it together.
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  And I'm gonna show you that now.
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  But before I show you that, I want to tell you something very shocking about garlic.
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  We all think, oh, it has allicin in it.
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  That has all those powerful benefits, hundreds and hundreds of different benefits from allicin.
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  Helps with the immune system, your heart, all those things.
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  Guess how that happens?
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  only when you mince or crush the garlic.
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  It has an enzyme called alanase that reacts with alanine to create allicins.
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  So the enzymes in the compound are in here, but it's the actual crushing and mincing of the garlic that releases that powerful healing compound.
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  So remember, every time you crush or mince your garlic, let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes so it concentrates that powerful healing compound in your food.
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  So the funnest way to dry out your garlic is to braid it first.
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  I have stiff neck garlic, so this makes it a little bit difficult.
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  But for something like this, you can just kind of grab it together, tie it off with some twine and then hang it.
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  I'm going to put it in my garage, but you still can braid it if you have the soft neck varieties.
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  So it's just like a regular braid where you just wind these together and you overlap them just like a regular braid.
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  If you know how to French braid, you can put multiples of these in there.
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  But again,
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  This is so stiff neck that makes it really difficult to do.
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  So in this situation, what I'm going to do is just grab a bunch of this stiff necked garlic and I'll put a big batch in here.
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  Get it all together and you can mix it up in various lengths, but it's so dry here in Utah, you really can't mess it up.
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  Then I'm going to throw a piece of twine around it.
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  And you can tie all kinds of different special knots.
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  I just tie an old granny knot to it like this, just to latch it together.
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  And then when I go inside my garage, what I'll do is I'll tie another piece around it, probably up here and hang it just like this from the ceiling and let it dry out for two weeks.
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  Then I'll come in after two weeks to make sure it's completely dry.
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  And if you live in a wetter environment and you harvested it wet, it's really good actually to stop watering before your harvest.
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  Cause if you have a really wet,
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  soggy garlic head, it can grow that mold.
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  You want to make sure it's completely dried out.
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  So when you cut this stem, it's nice and dry.
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  Then you're going to ensure it's not going to grow mold while you store it, because if it grows mold, this will actually hurt your body, not help it.
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  I have some garlic hanging in the garage that I processed about two weeks ago.
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  Let's go check that out right now.
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  We'll bring it out here to make sure it's ready to be stored, then utilized in our kitchen safely.
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  Here it is.
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  Look, it doesn't need to be fancy.
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  It just needs to be dry.
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  I'm just going to cut this off.
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  and take it back outside.
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  All right, you can see some of these sleeves just falling off.
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  Those were those leaves grew around and protected the garlic bulb.
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  A lot of these are falling off with the dirt.
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  You wanna leave most of those on, but you can break a couple off and to check and see if it's dry enough.
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  If you cut that and it's not super green and it's somewhat dry in there, you know you're gonna be okay to throw it in a basket.
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  You can use stainless steel.
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  But something has all this airflow that's really gonna make sure that it doesn't grow mold.
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  And then I'm gonna show you where I put it inside.
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  I put it on a shelf where I do my
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  cold storage.
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  It's kind of hard here, but I have an area in my basement, maybe you do too, that's a little more surrounded underground that maintains its temperature and it doesn't fluctuate as much.
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  It's cooler and darker in there.
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  And that's where I store my garlic.
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  Many of you have way better places to store your garlic.
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  This works just fine for me.
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  If you don't have a basement, you can just put it in your pantry.
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  It just makes sure it's dark and dry in there.
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  And they're also stored just fine if you use it during the summer months.
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  And one last tip before we finish processing this garlic and storing it away, look at this largest bulb out of all of these, this is the biggest bulb.
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  So this is the one you wanna eat, right?
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  No, this is the one you wanna dry out and replant next year.
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  This has better genetics, it did really well, so use this one, break it apart, and plant those cloves next year, and you'll just get better and better garlic.
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  And plus, they're bigger cloves, and they're gonna grow bigger garlic bulbs in the spring.
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  That's why I got some of these smaller ones,
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  I planted some smaller cloves, so I got smaller garlic, plus growing conditions, soil conditions, watering conditions, all that as well.
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  But take this big daddy, save it, and use these cloves to plant your garlic in the fall next year.
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  Nice and dry.
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  When you're cleaning it, it's a good idea not to knock off too many of the sleeves that actually protects the garlic.
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  But if a few fall off while you're removing the dirt, that's okay.
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  Some people just leave the dirt on, but I like to make it pretty.
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  Actually, my wife likes it pretty.
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  And these are perfect.
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  These are all really dry and ready to be stored.
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  Looks like I'm knocking off more sleeves than I am dirt.
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  And what I like about showing you these videos is I don't have this huge garden.
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  I live up in the mountains.
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  I'm planting garlic everywhere, but I'm still growing a garden.
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  I don't have the typical one acre garden.
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  I wish I did.
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  I don't have all these greenhouses.
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  I'm doing the best I can with the land that I have to continue to garden.
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  Because if you want to live longer, you want to find good excuses to get outside in nature because nature is our ultimate healer.
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  When our bodies are in our line with nature, we heal, we rest, we digest.
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  And when you're not in nature and you're not outside and you're inside and you're around all these toxic EMF fields, electric fields, you're not getting sunlight to drive your mitochondria and healing and hormones.
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  That's when you get sick and get diseased.
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  That's why one of the biggest longevity hacks is to find different ways to garden.
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  Don't look for excuses, look for ways to garden.
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  Here I am.
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  on the middle of the mountain, harvesting garlic and growing garlic.
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  It's more than enough to supply my whole family throughout the year, and I did it on a side of a mountain.
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  So even if you have just a deck outside, I plant garlic in all my little garden beds on my deck as well.
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  They're so easy to grow.
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  That's why I believe
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  Every garden, every raised bed, every garden box that's sitting on your porch should have at least a couple garlic cloves in there in the fall.
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  It's one of the first things that'll come up.
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  It reminds you of spring.
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  There's a beautiful medicinal herb that reminds you of rejuvenation and regrowth.
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  As you take a seed, you drop it in deep and it comes up early in the spring and you get to start harvesting it and using it as a medicinal plant.
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  And there's really amazing herbs that do that.
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  We can use garlic, rosemary, thyme, all these different herbs to work with our biology to bring about healing, not from chemicals our body can't utilize and integrate, but from chemicals that have aligned with our biology for thousands and thousands, if not millions of years, depending on your belief structure.
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  So this is really powerful stuff we get to share.
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  Gardening gets you outside, it gets you into a nature, and just that, the literature says, can help you live longer and feel better, have more energy, and even have a nicer tan.
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  So I can't wait to finish this off, and I can't wait to have this completely filled up with garlic.
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  After all of this, I have a bunch more garlic in my little mini greenhouse that I made, so we're gonna probably have about 100 cloves this year.
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  We'll have cloves to about 75 bulbs, I'll keep about 10
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  10 of them to plant next year.
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  But this is so much fun.
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  I mean, garlic, there's nothing better than tasting your own fresh garlic that you grew in your garden.
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  I'll come back on Tangle List and reuse this rope, throw this into the compost.
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  But right now let's go show you how I store my garlic for storage and utilization over the next year.
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  All right, look at this.
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  This isn't Martha Stewart perfect.
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  It's not like other influencers where they have the perfect place to store all their canned goods and it's all lined up in a row, ducks in a row.
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  We're just a family trying to harvest and collect, can our foods.
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  We're pickling.
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  We have these old pickling books.
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  We have our grinders and our mills.
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  And I have all my steamers and our pressure cookers.
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  And we're just doing the best we can.
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  I'm a family of five.
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  We don't have a lot of time to make everything look perfect.
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  But the important thing is we're doing it as a family.
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  My kids do this with me.
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  We're outside.
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  We're getting healthy.
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  We're preserving everything.
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  the healthiest food.
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  We're using regenerative farming methods.
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  We're using microbiology to release those important minerals and compounds into our food.
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  So the levels of vitamin C and antioxidants in our tomato sauce and everything that we do on our pickles, how we do it so it maintains some of the microbes, this is where true health comes from.
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  And again, one of the most powerful things that you can store and preserve for your health
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  is this simple.
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  It's so much easier than canning.
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  It's garlic.
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  This is something that you can do, that everybody can do.
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  So let me just go over again why this is a great place.
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  The temperature in here is relatively stable.
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  It has one, two, three concrete walls, and one of them are completely underground.
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  So that temperature from the soil is going to bring cool, stable air into this room.
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  And everybody who has a home with a basement has that.
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  Now, you don't want it humid.
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  If it's humid, you can start growing mold on your garlic.
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  So make sure you have a dehumidifier in your basement, keeping that humidity below 50%.
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  I prefer about 40%, but it's this easy now.
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  I'm gonna drop this in right on top of my canned tomato sauce.
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  I will take the rest of my garlic after I process it and dry it, put it in here.
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  Then when we need it, we'll bring it upstairs in the kitchen, utilize it.
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  When we run out, we'll come back and grab some more.
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  This is how simple it is.
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  Thank you again for watching Non-Toxic Living Garden Edition.
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  See you on the next episode.