Bare Root Plants for Sale
Thank you for your interest and happy growing!
PLEASE READ: If you are local or regional to the Finger Lakes area (able to pick up in person), feel free to reach out to hello@edibleacres.org with a clear wish list of plants as an alternative to ordering here and we will work to arrange a pickup.
We update our offerings on March 1st for Spring bare root sales and September 1st for Fall bare root sales. If you are visiting this page and see all plants as sold out, please make a note in your calendar to revisit at our next ‘opening’ and pick up some lovely plants!
Our Fall offerings tend to have higher numbers of trees, shrubs, cuttings and a medley of our abundant and Fall appropriate herbaceous perennials. Spring will generally have more herbaceous perennials and grasses, and a smaller number of trees and shrubs. We weight our inventory in large part based on seasonal appropriateness for establishment. We hope you understand and visit again if you don’t find the plants you are looking for this time.
If you are super eager to get plants now, we now have a Permaculture Nursery page that lists friends of ours with ethical and thoughtful growing practices. We strongly encourage you to check them out and get some awesome plants from them too!
Please be aware that some plants are considered ‘illegal’ in some states. It is possible that some of our plants are not allowed to be planted where you live. If you are in doubt, you can search the plant and your state and see if it they are prohibited or ‘illegal’ to plant and if so please don’t order them. Thanks.
TIP: Use the tags above to help filter our offerings by characteristic (ie. click on ‘fruit’ to find any fruit bearing plants we offer, etc.) As we add more and more it is a helpful way to find a plant to fit your goals…
Garlic Seed
Garlic Seed
Allium Sativum
Garlic! Certainly one of our most beloved crops. We eat garlic nearly every single day of the year, and it has been so reliable for us in growing and in storage.
We've found garlic to be a wonderful companion plant for young trees and shrubs, often reducing damage from mice, voles and rabbits. We often plant garlic following a potato crop when growing for production. We also plant garlic as a companion, in fields where we've planted tree seeds, to help protect the growing trees in their delicate infancy. Garlic has worked well for us in open fields far from the wood’s edge, though not as well in our forest gardens where squirrels and chipmunks reign supreme…
Our garlic is grown in fields following exclusively non-toxic/organic practices (we just don’t pay to be certified) using only hand tools to prep and manage beds, no irrigation or fertilizers of any sort, and just a rich mulch of organic hay (never plastic, never chemicals) and leaves applied in the Fall. With no irrigation and relying solely on rainfall, we believe we offer seed that has a high capacity for challenge and stressful conditions and can still size up. The garlic you will receive from us is garlic that is well adapted to minimal intervention, and chances are that the large heads we offer, when planted in rich garden soil and given even more attention, can grow even larger!
We have checked on many sites and believe we actually have the lowest priced garlic you can find online in the US, all grown with hand tools, natural compost, deep mulches and Earth care.
Hardneck Garlic - We started growing this garlic in 2008. Selected each year for very large cloves, excellent flavor and long storage, they grow incredibly well at this point. We don’t have a named cultivar for these but have gotten significant feedback that this hardneck line is one of the very best for size, flavor, storage and resilience.
Softneck Garlic - We grow an heirloom purple skinned type with nice cloves for a softneck garlic. Ideal for braiding, ornamental and culinary use. The heads don’t get huge, but the flavor is pungent and the heads have a unique form and color. Being able to braid heads is a lovely bonus
Elephant Garlic - Very mild flavor in an incredibly large clove, the Elephant garlic we offer has shown itself to be extremely hardy to our cold winters and grows into a beautiful giant leek looking plant with huge heads.
- We also have Elephant garlic ‘nuts’ that are an inexpensive way to ramp up your production if you have a little more time to spare :). These can be fall planted in rich soil with mulch and in one season they can evolve into large singular cloves that will then grow into the most massive heads of elephant garlic you can imagine!
Elephant Orbs - These are large singular cloves of elephant garlic that can be fall planted and will develop into absolutely unbelievably large heads.
Do you appreciate that we set our prices below most every option you can find? Are you in a position to offer a donation or support our work directly? You may be interested in adding a financial support to your order…
https://www.edibleacres.org/purchase/support-us - No pressure in any way, just know its an option to say you like what we’re up to and want to help subsidize very low prices so a wider range of people can access high quality plant material. Thank you either way!
When at checkout, please let us know if you are currently in a no/low income situation or if you are working with food justice or food security groups and as available we will happily share extra seed garlic in solidarity (as available).
NOTE: Our server estimates shipping cost of the garlic based on weight and location, and sometimes greatly overestimates the cost to ship - if you go to check out and the ship cost seems very high, it likely is a miscalculation which we will know once we ship, and we’ll refund the difference retroactively. We apologize for the inconvenience, but it’s the best we have to work with.
Size:
2' or so at peak height.
Site Preference:
Prefers full sun, well drained and rich soil and ample mulch
Hardiness:
Zone 3, probably much colder with enough winter mulch
Wondering how much garlic you need to order? Read on:
A simple way to figure out how much garlic you need to order is following this simple formula:
Multiply the square footage of your bed times 2 and then divide by the average number of cloves in a pound of seed garlic.
Let’s look at a simple example:
Your garlic bed measures 20 feet long by 3 feet wide. That equals 60 square feet. You can plant 120 cloves of garlic.
Our seed garlic has approximately the following quantities per pound:
• Hardneck ~35 cloves per pound
• Softneck ~50 cloves per pound
• Elephant ~20 cloves per pound
Elephant ‘Orbs’ - 5-8 massive cloves per pound
If we’re planting elephant garlic we would need 6 pounds of seed. (120 divided by 20), softneck would need 2.4 pounds (120/50) and hardneck 3.4 pounds (120/35) You can round up to nearest pound to be sure to have enough, you can always eat some!
Additional example:
4’ x 100’ bed = 400 sq ft. -> 400 x 2 = 800 cloves -> 800 / 35 cloves of hardneck = 22.85lbs. We would need 23 pounds of hardneck to plant out this bed.
