This is where it's nice to have gardnening friends. An initial investment in bulbs for beds are just simply not cheap anywhere by the pound. However those who perpetually raise garlic usually have plenty to spare for starting for the next year. Don't wait to long to find a source. I notice that every year suppliers seem to sell out quickly. Good luck.

If you have a local farmers' market, try getting some of their bulbs to be used for seed.

Or go to craigslist under "farm and garden" and search there.

I don't know if there are walmarts in Canada but, they were selling them for a dollar

I bought some food garlic off of Big Johns and planted the big ones. I ended up getting some 2-1/4" bulbs out of it. Southridge is cheap as i found. 8.50 pound. 4.50 for food garlic.

angel3x, we do have Walmarts in Canada. Haha :)

Is it safe using Garlic from Farmers Markets or buying Organic bulbs to be used for seed?

Is it safe using Garlic from Farmers Markets or buying Organic bulbs to be used for seed?

Sure. Even grocery stores. They aren't "seeds", you plant the individual cloves. Even if you ordered it by the pound from one of the garlic suppliers what you are getting is heads they have grown. You break the heads up and plant the individual cloves. What "safe" aspect are you worried about?

The only advantage to buying from suppliers is more choices in type/variety.

Dave

The "safe" aspect I was worried about is the same with Seed Potatoes.

Farmer markets without a doubt. For home consumption, I much prefer hardneck. I grow about 350, but I have a lot of friends who like garlic, and two families to feed. 100/year is a good number for a family, even if you are garlic lovers.

There honestly isn't a "safety" issue with either seed potatoes or garlic as in "safe to use and eat".

The issue is one of sprouting and production. Store bought potatoes, unlike seed potatoes, are often treated to delay or prevent sprouting. Still they do sprout and many gardeners grow their potato crop every year using nothing but store bought rather than certified seed potatoes. Some prefer store-bought since they haven't been treated with fungicides as seed potatoes often are.

Dave

I meant more about bringing diseases to the soil. I don't want to be unable to use a section of soil for 10 years just because I used stuff from the store.

Why dont you just start out with 100' row this year and see how it goes. Then take next years stock and replant. Chesnok red bulbs will go 40' a pound. I found some growers from 8.50-18.00 a pound. Ask them about food garlic, eat the small ones and plant the big ones. Its not diseased, just too small for a commercial grower to mess with planting. Thats what I did and it worked out great. I bought 3 pound of seed stock and 5 pound of food garlic. I think I had 75 bucks in it and got 250 garlic bulbs. Not to mention what I ate.

Here is a link that might be useful: Southridge Garlic

There is a concern with garlic from the large, chain grocery stores. Much of the garlic from these stores has been treated to retard and/or prevent growth. I learned this the hard way.

For two years in a row I purchased garlic from my local "big" grocery store chain and for two years it looked like it was going to grow but when I dug it up, there wasn't a bulb. There wasn't anything but a few weak roots and a stem.

After that I purchased "organic" garlic from the local Farmer's Market, and also ordered some on-line. Both grew well and flourished. I'm still growing the garlic from both of these sources.

Cindy

If you want to grow a lot of garlic cheap, and aren't worried about time, you can grow from actual seed...it would just take a 2nd year. From then on out, you would have plenty of stock to plant.

There's a guy on the seed exchange, soilent_green I think, that has these available.

I always plant some 100 bulbils, but the shoots get eaten in early spring.

If anyone is interested in seed garlic check out my Craigslist listing.
Happy planting!

Here is a link that might be useful: Garlic Seed

I don't need someone to give me some (although this would be nice), I was merely asking for the cheapest place to buy some. People are saying i can plant ones from store bought bulbs, so I might do it... although you can't get hardneck from a lot of big stores, unless I just hadn't looked for them.

There is one concern with grocery store garlic for those of us in the North. A lot of it sold is the so-called "artichoke" type -- softneck type that isn't particularly winter hardy. It might make it, it might not.

I did buy a purple-ish skinned, hardneck type at Whole Foods a few years back, it was $5.99 a lb at the time, and it is winter hardy here and actually does pretty well

Stuff, I tried this same stradegy last year and all I got was peoples rejects. Small bulbs, leftover crap they dont want. See where Im going? I traded some strawberry plants for some garlic and they werent even for this area. I spent $40 for some seed last year and that gave me more joy giving this out than Santa had at Christmas!! Spend the money on seed and enjoy!

No, I prefer to buy from a farm. There are lots of farmers of Garlic in my province of BC, but they aren't always the cheapest.

You'll see hard neck garlic come to the stores in the fall, when the S. American crop comes in...sit tight, you may get lucky!

How much space doe two pounds plant? I just bought two pounds and have no idea how much room to prepare.

"Anyone know where I can get cheap Garlic "seeds" or bulbs? I'm going to plant in September, and I want to grow at least 100 plants, and maybe up to 300 since I like Garlic and it can be stored. It needs to be able to be shipped to Canada."

Shipping live stock to Canada could present a problem, since it is presumed to carry soil with it. Small quantities might make it through Customs; but larger quantities - such as requested in the OP - could be held up. As a rule, while small quantities of seeds can generally pass across international borders, live plant material is restricted.

Since we are talking about Canada... have you checked with Seeds of Diversity for sources? Besides their listing of Canadian seeds sources, they sponsor "seedy Saturday" events all around Canada... you might be able to hook up with gardeners who could provide you with stock. You might also want to call Salt Spring Seeds, the owner is very involved in the Canadian heirloom movement.

The Allium Forum here on GW is another option... it has an Exchange section, and this is a good time of year, since many have their garlic curing right now. (My patio is impassible due to hanging garlic.) ;-) Maybe start a "Canadian Garlic Growers?" thread.

A cautionary note. Before you grow large amounts of garlic, you should know that the hardiest garlics - the hardnecks - do not generally store well. The artichoke types store a little better; and judging by your hardiness zone, Stuffradio, winter kill should not be an issue for you. They have done very well for me in Wisconsin.

I don't know how you intend to store or use that much garlic, but I highly recommend dehydration for long term storage. It preserves most of the flavor, and fully dehydrated garlic can be stored in plastic bags at room temperature for a year or longer.

I am new here, stumbled upon this, I highly suggest Goodies Garlic, they have planting garlic in the form of sprouts and beautiful big planting cloves, as well as eating garlic.

We go just over the stateline and buy from her, its a second generation farm and she has some of the best garlic. For her organic garlic products, she is by far the cheapest.

Currently she has developed a way to get garlic sprouts not by seed. She said this year people have tried over the years to grow from seed, but the ratio of seeds dying out is high, for various reasons, and her new way of developing them, none of her sprouts have died.

She has also developed a way to keep hardnecks storing longer than the softnecks. By gosh, it works.

Here is the link to her email.
http://www.hotfrog.com/Companies/Goodies-Garlic-and-Produce/SendEmail.aspx?company=Goodies-Garlic-and-Produce

Garlic with very thick necks do not dry or store very well. For home use then, I run these through my blender - along with some oil - either olive or peanut oil - then freeze in small ice cube trays. Comes in handy to pop those cubes into a pot of spaget or use for saute of fried foods.

The red garlic seems to be more pungent if you are thinking of using it in Italian type dishes.

I recently had an "experience" with garlic cloves that turned "green" in my fermented dilly bean recipe. This was apparently caused by garlic that had been fresh picked - not aged/dried enough, although unsightly in my jar of dilly beans, it was deemed "not harmful."

I use store garlic - reddish/purple prefered - and try to remember to give an extra feeding of bone meal before planting time.

Just my 2 c's.

P.S. It makes me a bit sad to see so much of it coming from outside of the USA.

Bejay

I ended up getting 1 or just over 1 lb of garlic at a farmers market. It was around $15 CAD.

I'd like to comment on the idea of planting garlic bulbs bought from the grocery or farmer's market. In my region, it is actually ill-advised to plant any garlic bulbs that are not certified. The bulbs bought in a grocery firstly will not sprout as well as a certified bulb due to the processes farmers use to grow those bulbs to stay fresh longer will stunt it's growth from seed.

Most importantly, however, any uncertified bulb can introduce a fungus called white rot into the soil and possibly further, hitting garlic and onions the most. In my area, onion production is high and the white rot can contaminate and ruin crops for gardeners and farmers alike. If white rot is introduced into any ecological system the gardener can be heavily fined for the infraction.

So, the best way really, is to grow certified garlic only. These bulbs are more pricey than the store-bought variety, but the the experience is worth and the white rot fungus is not. Thanks.

Consider buying 5 or more certified garlic bulbs. At any price, if you plant the first crop at the certified garlic price, you can consider this to be just the initial first purchase. Every year at harvest, the large garlic bulb heads can be saved and stored and then planted for the next year's yield. I spent about $50 for 10 certified bulbs and although it was priced high, I have to consider the quality of the product, its certification and also that I can plant the certified cloves year after year. We have harvested our second year of this garlic and are ready to plant again next month. If your harvests are good, the initial cost in actually very minimal.

One caveat, I live in zone 6 and the law prohibiting uncertified garlic for its potential white rot fungus applies. I am not certain if these laws apply definitely to other zones.

Happy planting.

I agree that trying to grow out store bought garlic is a bit risky as much of it comes from China these days.

As far as I know there are only 3 states that offer garlic certification (California, Nevada, and Washington). I believe white rot is by far most prevalent in California and Washington so maybe it is just best for the rest of the country to steer clear of purchasing garlic from those states to begin with. In some of the north eastern states Garlic Bloat Nematodes are more of an issue and can also render a garden plot useless for growing alliums for several years.

I think that's very ambitious for a first time garlic grower. I would buy several types and plant them to see what I like best, then grow that. Some varieties taste great, but won't bulk up in your soil/climate...some varieties will, but may be too hot or too mild for your taste. Keep in mind that for every clove you plant, you will get 5- 8 times that many to plant the next year. Rather than diving into this, my advice would be to sample this year...then next year you will know what you like and what grows well for you. It would be a shame to plant 300 cloves, only to find out that they never size up well in your area or soil...or that they don't suit you taste-wise.

I just realized people are participating in my 5 year old thread for some reason. I grew 1,000 garlic this year and I could easily grow 5,000 this next year. I'm not a first time grower anymore. Thanks for participating though! I got these seeds from my crops since 2011. I've been saving most of the garlic and re-planting the next year each year.

I guess fireopalite thought it necessary to revive your post to lecture us on the need to buy 'certified' garlic which doesn't really exist other than a few places that have problems with the white rot fungus.

I grew 1,000 garlic this year and I could easily grow 5,000 this next year

That just goes to show how fast you can ramp up on garlic quantity if you really want to....from one pound to close to 1000 pounds in 6 harvest years. Are you still growing just the one type that you bought back in 2011?

I thought about ramping up on growing garlic but about 450 is as high as I went. Growing more was not a problem, but the logistics of harvest, curing, cleaning, and proper storage was. I wasn't really interested in selling it either. I will probably stay in the 200-250 bulb range going forward. Too many other things I want to try my hand at growing to allocate more space to garlic.

Yes, it was just the 1 variety from 2011. This year though someone gave me a sampling of other varieties last year to also grow. Those are not included in these 1,000 bulbs I grew this year.