We love to share what we love... and we love garlic and shallots! You'll find gorgeous seed garlic & shallots listed here every late Summer/early Fall. And don't forget the fertility... our Organic Garlic and Shallot Fertilizer has specially blended diverse amendments to feed both our soil and our alliums, and in turn, us!
Transcript: Let’s talk about the chemistry of garlic and why it’s such an amazing, super powerful medicine. So let’s briefly let’s take a step back and this beautiful clove of garlic does not smell like garlic. It looks like garlic, it has garlic, but it doesn’t have that garlic scent. And the same thing with an onion. If you have an onion in its skin and you pick it up, it really doesn’t smell like an onion. But as soon as you cut it, all of a sudden, it’s pungent and you know, you’re cutting garlic, you know, you’re cutting an onion, what’s going on?
What you’re smelling, is actually, in part, what’s imparting the medicinal qualities of these plants. And so it’s this kind of crazy thing that happens. Garlic has this wild, super complex, really dynamic chemical background, which is really fun. But here’s the key thing to know. There are all of these little pockets of oils and other compounds within the cellular structure of every bit of this And so when you crush it, when you cut it, you’re cutting through cellular structures, and enzymes that are otherwise hanging out doing other things. This enzyme called alliinase interacts with this otherwise inert compound called allinin. And when they form when they meet each other, they create allicin. That’s actually spelled not like the woman’s name, but A-L-L-I-C-I-N. And allicin is this super pungent, tons of sulfur, and, you know, all of a sudden that you’re cutting garlic, and it’s very volatile. It’s very brief, briefly lived in the world and so you smell it only for about 15 minutes.
And so when I’m using garlic as medicinal if I’m feeling a little cold coming on, and I want to just eat a clove of raw garlic because I know that’s going to crazy boost my immune system. I’m going to chop it fine or put it through my garlic press. And then I’m going to put on the timer for 15 minutes because it’s that 15 to 25 minute range where that allicn is at its optimal level, and is at its highest peak of medicinal properties. And before then it really hasn’t, it hasn’t fully formed. And after that, it’s formed and it’s already dissipated into the atmosphere into the ether. And so, yes, that is the crazy thing about garlic as medicine, you need to fully disturb and disrupt its cellular structure in order to make it a medicine.
And not all garlic is equally medicinal. The kinds of garlic that is the most pungent, there’s a very direct relationship between the pungency of garlic and the intensity, the efficacy of it as a medicine. And so in general, the porcelain types which is Italy Hill porcelain is a classic German White, you can take a look at our website and on generally online any variety will still tell you not only the variety name, but what classification of garlic it is, and it is the porcelain types that are the highest in those soluble sulfur compounds and so it is those porcelain types that are absolutely the ones to have around for medicine for those moments too.
