Everyone knows Czech. Primarily for its strong smell, then also for its pungent taste and last but not least for its versatility in the kitchen. But few people know that it is garlic that can easily replace a whole range of chemical drugs. It contains many important substances, which is why it can do so much.
For example, it can improve immunity, help with high cholesterol, as well as benefit the heart or clean blood vessels. It also has a positive effect on the digestive tract and can deal with some parasites. All this makes garlic exceptional. And that’s not all. It contains natural antiseptics and antibiotics, vitamins A, B, and C, and of the minerals, mainly selenium, calcium, and iodine.
This powerful herb is easy to grow
The only thing garlic requires is to go through a cold season to complete its life cycle and start a new one. Adequate watering is also required in spring. Carefully divide the best and largest drumsticks from the summer harvest into individual cloves and plant them with the tip upwards. Plant them in pits about 5 cm deep. The distance between the rows should be about 20 cm. The easiest way to measure this is with a board of the desired width, on which you will stand while planting so that you do not trample the prepared bed unnecessarily.
Garlic hates acidic soil, so sometimes it is necessary to sprinkle lime on the prepared soil. The bed should not take after any other bulbous vegetable, partly to keep pests out, but also because the same types of plants consume the same nutrients.
Of these rewarding vegetables, the following can be used in the kitchen:
- strawberries
- sprouts
- young stems
Growing right in the kitchen
The garlic shoots as well as the young stems can be grown at home in the window as a living reservoir of vitamins, not only for the winter. Just dip the cloves in water and new shoots will sprout within a week. These can then be transplanted into a pot or potted plant and you have a self-renewing pharmacy right in your kitchen. The shoots and young stems can be used to spice up salads or used directly on bread like chives or spring onions.