Where to buy garlic for planting in your garden

Grocery Store: You definitely DO NOT want to buy garlic for planting from the grocery store. It is sold as culinary consumer size so the cloves are really too small to expect a sizable plant bulb in the end. Read my page on Hardneck Garlic Seed to find out how clove size affects the outcome. Another reason the grocery store fails is that the garlic sold there is mostly imported from China, usually around 60-70% of American grocery garlic sales. Our American garlic farmers are constantly pressured by this flooding of cheap, low grade garlic. Finally you have no idea what variety of garlic you're getting. It would be like planting generic apple seeds when there's a huge variety of taste, texture, size and tree structures available to use.
Farmer Market: This is certainly a possibility. You may have a real person before you that can answer questions about variety and perhaps share their own experiences along with recommendations. A good person working there should be a people person who is willing to help you buy garlic for planting. You're paying a price for a hopefully higher quality of garlic so a little "free" advice could be expected.
Online Distributor Seed Sellers: I distinguish the distributors from the online growers. As a gardner I have my favorite seed distributors and their quality is usually good. Their hardneck garlic for planting is very acceptable. Of course they source their supply from growers so you don't have that opportunity for interaction with the producer so any help with your decision to buy garlic for planting may be limited. Also the choice of varieties available for purchase could be narrow.
Online Growers: Okay I'm going to be biased here. The online growers I've dealt with have been a very helpful, wonderful group of people. In my early years they were definitely the best place to buy garlic for planting. You can often be sure that the quality of their hardneck garlic seed is excellent and their business traits are outstanding. I can only strive to emulate them. A good online grower / seller is the best place to buy hardneck garlic seed for planting. They should be able to personally answer questions allowing their "computer time" vs "working in the fields time". Typically you may get a reply in 1-3 days. Their prices are in line with all the hand labor involved, extra time for customer education, weather affected crop loss and the ever increasing costs of production. It can be confusing to figure out how much hardneck garlic seed you're getting for the money. Your goal is usually for "X" number of plants to grow however there is no absolute consistent rule for all garlic seed.
Maybe Me: So far I've reviewed the various sources of hardneck garlic seed to plant. I imagine a customer to match with me would be someone who just wants to plant quality garlic cloves of a variety suitable for family consumption or farmer market sales. Because I use commercial fertilizer on my donated potato crop as well as my garlic I am not eligible to be organic. Therefore it's not fair that I would try to sell at organic farmer prices. They work extra hard and are proud of their Organic Certification as they should be. If organic hardneck garlic seed is important to you I'm honestly not the one.