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The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community
Historical Events
Today is Garlic Lovers Day
Garlic, or stinking rose, is a member of the lily family. Onions, leeks, and shallots are also in the family. All alliums are reactive to the amount of daylight they receive, so a great way to think about the garlic life cycle is that it matures during the longest days in the summer.
This is why Autumn is garlic-planting time in most areas, and many gardeners wait until after the fall equinox in the back half of September. (This year's autumnal equinox is Thursday, September 22, 2022).
By planting garlic in the fall, your garlic gets a headstart on the growing season, which means that when spring arrives, your little garlic shoots will be one of the first plants to greet you in the April rain.
Garlic has antibiotic properties and helps reduce blood pressure and cholesterol. Herbalists recommend garlic as a remedy for colds.
And Gilroy, California, is known as the World's Garlic Capital.
Most of us know and love garlic as a culinary staple - a must-have ingredient for most savory dishes.
Alice May Brock, American artist, author, and former restaurateur, once wrote,
Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.
And Anthony Bourdain, in Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, wrote:
Garlic is divine. Few food items can taste so many distinct ways, handled correctly. Misuse of garlic is a crime...Please, treat your garlic with respect...Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.
1794 Birth of Charles Wilkins Short, American botanist and doctor.
A Kentuckian, Charles wrote a flora of Kentucky in 1833. He had one of the largest, most valued private herbariums with 15,000 plant samples, and his massive garden covered several acres.
Charles was honored in the naming of many plants, including the Oconee bell named the Shortia galacifolia. The location of the plant became a mystery during the 1800s.
In 1863, Charles Short died, and at the time, the Shortia plant still could not be found.
But finally, in May of 1877, a North Carolina teenager named George Hyams sent an unknown specimen to Harvard's top plant expert, the knowledgeable Asa Gray, who could be heard crying 'Eureka' when he finally saw the Shortia specimen.
Two years later, Asa and his wife, along with his dear friend, the botanist John Redfield, the director of the Arnold Arboretum Charles Sprague Sargent, and the botanist William Canby got to see the Shortia in the wild in the spot where George Hyams knew it was growing. The scientists all stood around the little patch of earth where the Shortia grew in oblivion, and the long search to find the Shortia, named for Charles Wilkins Short, was over.
1799 Death of the English botanist geologist, physician, and chemist William Withering.
William was a doctor and the first person to study Digitalis - most commonly known as Foxglove. The story goes that one day, he noticed a person suffering from what was then called dropsy, an old word for a person suffering from congestive heart failure. William observed that the patient in question showed remarkable improvement after taking an herbal remedy that included Digitalis or Foxglove. Today William gets the credit for discovering the power of Digitalis because after he studied the various ingredients of this remedy, he determined that Digitalis was the key ingredient to address
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