Grey Duck Garlic
Commercial Garlic Grower's Page
Buy certified organic seed garlic bulbs and cloves
See our Marketing Page and Grow Big Garlic Guide for more great tips on growing garlic for a profit!
Growers Discount: Over 25 lbs receives a grower's discount: we are a small farm and have limited amounts of each garlic seed variety, so to avoid disappointment order early.
Right: Georgian Crystal garlic bulbs directly after harvest.
Please contact Jane at greyduck@ greyduckgarlic.com or at her message phone (509) 595-3288 about orders larger than 25 pounds. We need to personally verify that we have the varieties in the amounts you need.
Use the Paypal button below for custom orders.
Grower's Discount
25-49 lbs: $1.00 discount per pound garlic
$16.00 per lb medium bulbs
$19.00 per lb large bulbs
50-99 lbs $2.00 discount per pound garlic
$15.00 per lb medium bulbs
$18.00 per lb large bulbs
100 lbs and over $3.00 discount per pound garlic
$14.00 per lb medium bulbs
$17.00 per lb large bulbs
For all orders over 25 lbs we charge actual shipping.
See our Buy Organic Garlic page for descriptions of the garlic varieties we grow.
Presorted cloves: For only $2.00 extra per pound we will clove AND sort your garlic. You will receive presorted large or medium cloves ready to put in the ground.
Why are presorted garlic cloves good deal?
1) You will receive only planting size seed cloves that will produce large garlic (your choice of medium or large cloves).
2) You will not have to clove and sort the garlic which will save you time and the cost of labor.
3) You will save money since there will be zero waste. Garlic bulbs usually have about 5-11% waste depending on the variety, plus you will always have some cloves that are too small to plant. Also, shipping is less on cloves since more can fit into a box.
4) Uniform cloves will give you a more uniform crop which is important if you are reselling your crop.
5) Garlic harvest time depends on size of garlic. When you plant uniform cloves all garlic can be harvested on the same date.
When you buy presorted cloves they are ready to put in the ground the day they arrive (so make sure to specify when you will be planting).
To right: Uniform Romanian Red cloves will produce nice large bulbs.
Why Should You Buy Grey Duck Seed Garlic?
Why should you buy seed garlic when you could just multiply and plant our own garlic? Certainly this is a viable choice and a few of our customers do that. However, most growers choose to buy their seed garlic from us since it actually saves them money.
Why buying Grey Duck seed garlic makes economic sense:
1) Saving garlic to plant means less garlic to sell:
Here’s an example of how to calculate how much garlic to save for seed:
We usually save around 20% of our garlic to plant.
Since Susan insists that we only plant the big cloves, we have to clove 2 to 3 times more garlic than we plant to sort out only the largest cloves. To obtain 100 pounds of seed garlic, we clove 200-300 pounds of garlic (this amount varies depending on variety, size of garlic, and how picky you are about the size of your planting cloves).
If we sold that 200-300 lbs garlic to a restaurant for $10/pound we would make $2,000-$3,000.
Buying 100 lbs of presorted medium seed cloves would cost $1,600 or presorted large cloves would cost $1,900.
2) Growing organic garlic takes land, fertilizer and labor:
It takes us about 600 sq ft to plant 50 pounds of garlic* (we plant in 4 x 50 ft beds of approximately 600 cloves so this is 3 large beds)
To raise that 600 square ft from planting to harvest it takes us: (all times are rough estimations for one person using Grey Duck Garlic past records; you may need more or less time):
Rotortilling: 10 minutes with tractor, 1.5-2 hours hand tiller 
Cloving bulbs: 6-8 hours
Planting: 4-7 hours
Mulching time: 1 hour
Weeding time: 10-15 hours
Harvest time: 4-7 hours
Cleaning and curing labor: 3-4 hours
Above right: Chris prepares garlic beds with his tractor pulled tiller.
Cost of labor: 28-44 hours labor @ $15/hr $420-$660
This does not include:
Cost of land (rent or taxes)
Cost of mulch
Cost of fertilizer or manure
Cost of storage space
Loss of profit for alternative crops in that space
Loss of time you may want to spend elsewhere
* Plan on a 400-600% increase of your planting stock (i.e., if you plant 10 lbs of garlic you will usually get a 40-60 lbs of garlic bulbs at harvest. Your yield will depend on growing conditions, garlic variety, the greenness of your thumb, and weather. On average, to grow 200 extra pounds of garlic (to sort for 100 pounds of large seed cloves) you will need to plant an extra 50 lbs of garlic.
See our Marketing Page and our Grow Big Garlic Page for more hints on growing and selling the biggest and best garlic.
