Repelling most people (and vampires!), garlic is a favorite at mealtime. It has been a few years since we tried—and failed—to grow garlic in our garden. The rodent thieves always find it and dig it up but they don’t eat it. Very frustrating to experience, especially since we can, like Julius from “Everybody Hates Chris,” calculate how much that lost garlic cost us. 😫

This year we’re trying one more time to grow garlic in our garden. It’s partially a test to see how many of our staple vegetable items we can grow as we face higher prices in the grocery stores. It’s also a response to the lower quality food that is sitting on the shelves, likely due to something cost-related for the store owners.

Recently, I went to buy garlic and the produce manager had only set out the oldest garlic in stock. I got some that was a little bit fresher but I only bought two —-instead of the eight that I wanted to buy.

Frustrated, I decided that next spring, the garlic we would be picking would be fresh from our own garden. So we planted some of our own, following the Ohio State University Extension instructions.

After covering the cloves with soil, we added straw and some bird netting to try to keep the animals out. Our wildlife friends—digo, FOES—are very clever though. We can only hope for the best and in the meantime, we still have to shop for garlic in the stores.

Buying fresh(er) garlic | How can you tell if the garlic you are picking over is fresh? Well, here are some things that you won’t see with fresher garlic:

• green sprouts from the top
• loose, wet cloves
• shriveled cloves
• brown husks
• soft cloves
• mold
• discoloration
• mushy or squishy
• bad, pungent odors

Keeping it fresh | Garlic doesn’t really last a long time at our house. Either we’re eating it (the organic kind) or making an insect repellant (non-organic kind) so it is used up fairly quickly.

If keeping it longer, it is recommended to store garlic in an airtight container. We like to wrap ours in parchment paper and set it on the counter for the few days that it might sit before getting cooked.

For your health | All garlic lovers know that smelly breath is a small price to pay for the benefits of eating garlic. Here are a few medical areas garlic is known to improve:

• Immunity
• Heart health
• Blood glucose
• Blood pressure
• Cholesterol
• Inflammation
• Brain health
• Antioxidant

Now go get some garlic, or even better —GROW some of your own!

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We are living some difficult economic days and sadly, more and more people are being added to the list of food-insecure Americans. At ColorBlindWork | People. Plants. Purpose., we are investigating products that will help us to put staple vegetables within reach for elderly, lower-income and/or food-insecure individuals who typically receive SNAP, WIC and other government benefits. We hope that there will be grant opportunities to make the project a reality but as with anything that is important, we are determined to find a way to make it work.