Why I'm Never Buying Onions and Garlic Again...

this video is sponsored by betterhelp eggs and garlic are two of the most consumed vegetables and aromatics on the entire Earth and if you live in a place that can grow these things it's very likely that they make up an enormous part of your food culture and it turns out that growing them at home is quite simple and comes with some serious advantages so today I'm going to be breaking down how to grow both of these things as well as all of the delicious culinary benefits that come along with growing onions and garlic at home so pretty much every single beginner Gardener wants to start off big they want to grow tomatoes and zucchinis and eggplants I'm certainly guilty of it when I started my first Garden a decade ago that's exactly what I grew but something like a tomato plant can be a bit discouraging when you start gardening because it comes with issues whereas onions and garlic they are probably the easiest two crops you can grow as a beginner Gardener trust me I am not a wizard I have not been growing them for long and wait till you see these harvests so we're going to start off with garlic so first I'm going to break down the basics of growing garlic in your home Garden you first need to get your hands on some garlic bulbs which is just a full head of garlic like this you can order these specifically from Garden or Seed stores online which is going to be prime for growing you can also just buy a few heads from a farmer's market or a grocery store just keep in mind that a lot of the mass-produced garlic is treated which can hinder the actual growth of your garlic all of you at some point I'm sure have seen your garlic at home just Sprout like you left it outside on the counter too long and it starts to sprout that is your garlic telling you it wants to reproduce more it is germinating and you can just rip that off and throw it in the soil and see what happens but in my case I'm using some garlic that I grew last season and I'll just break that up into the individual cloves I'll put some holes in my soil about a foot apart and I'm going to plant the little knobby side down which is where the roots are going to come out of you can do this in a pot a garden bed or your direct soil garlic is super versatile it will grow anywhere and when you grow garlic really depends on the Zone you're in I'm in 7B so what I did was I planted my garlic at the end of the fall when it started getting cold and what's amazing about garlic is it will store in the ground over winter which basically just means it's hibernating through the entire winter and right when it gets warm in the spring it's the first thing to sprout up in your garden and now what's incredible about garlic is you can Harvest it throughout most of its growing life compared to say a tomato which puts out fruit that you have to harvest when it's ripe if you watch my videos you've seen me Harvest it in its younger form which is called Green garlic and this stuff is delicious because when it's young the entire stock is tender more like a green onion just with garlic flavor so these are great stir fried I even tried fermenting a few this season which turned out really nice and if you're growing a hard neck variety which I grew this season your Garlic's gonna start flowering which is called the garlic scape and you're actually going to want to pick these off which will put more energy into the actual garlic bulb at the bottom and these are fantastic you can Grill them up you can stir fry them you can pickle them they make an incredible pesto I even dehydrated some this year and that's why I plant so much garlic I grow the most of it compared to any other plant because I'm harvesting it throughout the entire growing season making sure that I still have a bunch for actual long-term storage which happens at this point right here when a few of the bottom leaves start turning yellow another good sign is if you do leave a garlic scape on and it starts going from curled too straight the garlic bulbs at this point should really have swollen up to the maximum size they're going to get so I'll Harvest all the garlic and get that curing one more batch so this garlic is freshly pulled out of the ground now we enter into the very important stage of curing which is taking this fresh pulled garlic and finding a place to just dry it out over the course of like two to three weeks so I'm just using this table I spread it out evenly I throw it in the garage you can use a rack you can cure it outside in your garden if it's not going to rain it just needs to be protected and luckily for you I've got the fresh and I've got the cured this has been sitting here for around two and a half weeks and you can see huge difference that stem is completely dried out and what you're looking for is that middle piece right there you want that nice and dry and now this Garlic's ready for long term storage and now all I have to do is trim Off The Roots trim off that stem or you could tie it up if you want you could braid it like you see the Italians do and then once all your Garlic's processed you want to store it in a cool darker area just like you would store regular garlic from the store and the goal is that I will save a few of these heads to replant in November December when it gets cold and the rest will last me until I harvest more garlic again so theoretically if everything goes to plan you have an endless garlic Loop where I'll never have to buy garlic again in my life all right comment below if you think that this big bit of garlic plus all of this when it's cured will get me through the year for a guy who uses garlic in pretty much everything so before we move on I want to tell you about today's sponsor which is better help and now I've been going to therapy for the past few months and for some reason therapy was always something I was always scared of now that I'm doing it it's like why the hell was I not doing this my whole life the best way I can explain it is that from a very young age when we're kids we kind of create our own operating system our own way to get by in the world that of course is influenced from the way we were raised from our environment and a ton of other factors and since mental health in a lot of cultures is not top priority most of our operating systems are a little bit out of whack so therapy is a great way to take a deeper look at how we're currently operating from our emotions our relationships how we're interacting in the world and make a few tweaks to hopefully live a more harmonious and balanced life but it can be very tricky to find a therapist and also very expensive which is why betterhelp is such an incredible resource since their goal is to make therapy more affordable and more accessible by filling out a few questions betterhelp can match you up to a professional therapist in just a few days so if you're considering online therapy click the link below in the description or visit betterhelp.com Pro home cooks and you can get 10 off your first month of better help now back to the video [Music] so we're moving on to onions which are just as easy when it comes to your onion Journey there's three main Avenues you can choose from you've got seeds sets and starts you can buy some onion seeds and plant them directly in your soil or I like starting them in trays to get them going and then you would transplant those outside you can also order these little dried bulbs these are called onion sets you can just pop a hole in your soil plant these directly in the ground and just watch them grow or finally you have onion starts which is just like buying a little tomato seedling from the nursery they kind of look like shriveled up little scallions in a bunch these onions have been pre-grown for you to a certain point and all you have to do is just pop them in the soil and watch them grow which is the route that I took early in the spring right when the soil started getting warm but you can overwinter onions just like you would do garlic and just let garlic the benefit of growing onions is you can use them throughout the entire growing season I actually haven't bought an onion since I started growing them because spring onions are so delicious this is basically just an onion and it's younger form and it's not ready for storage at this point but they are delicious just freshly cooked or you can slice them up raw throw them in a salad I pickled a bunch of the spring red onions which were amazing and at any point you can chop off the green onion tops and use them like you would a scallion as a garnish or in some scrambled eggs or you can dehydrate them and turn them into a green onion powder which is what I did this year which was great but the real Harvest happens when the Bulb Has swollen up and the stem has fallen over flat so you can see how the green onion part is still sticking straight up so it's technically still giving energy to this bowl whereas here it's completely droopy so it has cut off all energy right at the stem and it's ready to be harvested here's a few red onions as well these are nice wow that book hi this one so the reason I grew grouped onions and garlic together because they're so similar in the way they grow and the way they are processed just like your fresh garlic these onions cure in the exact same way you can hang them you can just lay them out on the table like I have here look at that again these have been curing for about three weeks and you can see the stem is totally dried out roots are dried out these onions are just calling to be trimmed up so I'll chop off that stem chop Off The Roots peel any dirty layers get them in a container and storing in a cool dark place so I've shown you how easy it is to grow these two plants but I know a lot of you are thinking that it is still way too much work when you could just go to the store and buy some onions and garlic they're not really expensive plants right so this is the point in the video where I try to convince you why you should grow them at home and I've broken it down into Five Points number one is that you simply cannot find these products in stores I'm talking about the intermediary stuff the spring onions the garlic Scapes the green garlic they will sell them in some farmers markets I definitely bought them over the years but you'll pay a premium for them and to me these products that you're getting before the final Harvest that you're probably not used to from a culinary standpoint they are just so fun to cook with and they're just as good maybe even better like I love using these products compared to what everyone's used to just onion and garlic number two is the freshness we've got home grown here store-bought here and this is the best I can get this is Whole Foods organic onion and garlic from a grocery store you're not getting much better than this let's do garlic first little comparison there you can see the first sign is just a much tighter head like it's not easy to break these apart whereas here you know it's super simple I'll just break one bulb so a tight head is your first sign of freshness crack these apart and I'll just break them in half so I can get the Aromas obviously a huge advantage on the Homegrown considering I just harvested it but that's also another good reason is like I don't know when this Garlic's from maybe it's already a year old smell Oh I thought the Homegrown would be just a stronger garlic pungency but it's actually much more pleasant it's got much more aromatic quality like flowery Essence to it that's fantastic that just smells like some garlic tasting raw garlic pungent but good whoa whoa okay the store-bought stuff is much more pungent with that sulfur kick this is pungent but it's actually kind of pleasant to some degree try that one more time ah that like burns my mouth that is really interesting I did not expect that but let's move on to onion homegrown store-bought this obviously looks fresher because this has been sitting on a shelf for a while this is store-bought and homegrown there's not a huge difference these cell walls are like slightly tighter than these the actual water content is pretty similar again it's kind of a similar thing where you think that the Homegrown is going to be more pungent because it's fresher but it has more of an aromatic quality whereas the store-bought is more pungent smell taste test start with the Homegrown that's surprisingly not too bad to eat raw you can taste the sweetness and then the after kick is a bit pungent store-bought that's not bad either some good sweetness not as pungent as I thought it would be from the smell definitely has that after kick as well these are more similar compared to the garlic I think where the Homegrown wins is that this aromatically just feels like a slightly duller version than this and from my personal experience from having these Fresh Products you can't compare every time I give away a bulb to a friend they kind of freak out they're like I didn't know garlic could be that fresh number three is that something I've realized from growing so much garlic in onions is that almost all of my meals start with them at least 50 so having them on hand is just so beneficial you don't have to think about as much as get the garlic and onions slice them up and start cooking them and then whatever Builds on top of that whether it's a tomato sauce a pasta a curry a stir fry a fried rice there are so many great options that I'll start with a great Bay case of garlic and onions number four is the money savings now of course to grow a bunch of onions and garlic you need space But even taking a pot growing some on a patio you're still going to save some money and the crazy thing about say growing garlic is for me now all I have to do is save enough of the bulbs to replant again in the fall and then I actually will have a never-ending garlic Loop completely free garlic for life which is just out of control outside of all the other benefits free garlic for Life obviously you got to put in your time but like I said garlic is damn easy to grow and as far as the onions go you can actually save seeds from the flour that comes off the top of the green onion which I'm gonna do this year so technically that can be free for life as well and although onions and garlic are not the priciest vegetables you're going to find in the grocery store if you are hunting down really high quality product from a farmer's market those costs will really add up and finally number five is not only are they two of the easiest crops to grow but they are just fun I don't understand why they flew under my radar I will definitely be growing onions and garlic in life making sure I have enough for the entire year so hopefully you enjoyed this video click right here for more Garden content and I'll see you in the next one [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 260,513

Keywords: pro home cooks, mike g, mike greenfield, gardening, homesteading, homegrown, onion, garlic, spring onions, green garlic, young garlic, savings, curing, DIY, red onions, organic, harvesting, onion sets, onion starts, onion seeds, garlic bulbs, how to, bulbs, cloves, store bought, comparison, how to grow onions, how to grow garlic, how to store garlic, growing garlic at home

Id: NmIwGOkV4uY

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023