New! - Updated August 28, 2011 -
If you are an organic/natural grower of garlic and have some good size, well-grown, clean, healthy bulbs for sale,
please E-Mail bob@web-access.net and let's talk. We're always looking for top quality garlic.

What we did in 2010 and before. Up until 2010 I had been buying from organic and sustainable growers at their regular bulk prices for these unusual varieties of garlic and selling at the retail level via the internet. This has worked well as the growers found a market they did not previously have and my having these gourmet garlics available has attracted lots of gardeners and epicures to my website. Business has been so good that we have maxxed out our storage/shipping facility. To continue doing what I have been doing would require building a larger facility, buying more furniture, computers, etc. and hiring additional employees. This is more complications than I want in my life at this time. In 2010 I finally put together a garlic growers farmers market on my website so that small organic and sustainable growers could sell direct to the public at their prices. We started off with four growers and sales started off a little slow but built up fast and more people became interested and five more signed signed up so that we had nine growers this year. Except for one far northern grower who had a weather-related crop failure, all of our growers are either sold out or nearly sold out and all regard it to have been a success and are happy with it and will be back next year. By bringing buyer and grower together, we have served a valuable function to both. Neither we nor any other small grower can satisfy the market needs for these garlics but by combining resources, we can help more buyers find their cherished garlics and more growers find a good market for their best garlic. There are lots of good organic growers located in remote rural areas or other areas that do not have adequate local sales. We have provided such growers with a market they would not otherwise have and permitted them to increase their sales and incomes. We have served as a resource to the public seeking exotic gourmet garlics and have built up an impressive following. If you are an organic/natural grower who can grow more than you can sell locally, and if your garlic meets our quality standards, E-Mail me, bob@web-access.net and let's talk about doing some business together. We're looking for the best you have to offer because the people who buy the garlic expect the best, so send us quality garlic - your reputation rests on it and first impressions are very important. This could result in a lot of future repeat sales nationwide from people who have enjoyed your garlic.

What we are doing in 2011. Our attractive and informative website serves to increase the desire of people to try the garlics they see and read about. By letting garlic lovers know that so many kinds exist and a little about them, we create an appetite for them and also provide people an opportunity to buy them. By providing our customers with large, healthy, well-grown garlic, we foster in them a desire to try even more of these culinary delights. This leads to even more subsequent business. By providing top quality garlic we cause our customers to want to buy from us again and to tell their friends about the interesting garlics they got - everyone wants to share a good thing to make it even better. You cannot generate this kind of excitement with second-rate garlic, only the best will do. I propose to share the attraction of my website with participating gardeners/growers who want to rent a booth (webpage) on our website and sell direct to the general public with each grower setting their own prices and other customer relations, pretty much like any farmers market in the country. We will provide a webpage of our own set design for each grower using basic information provided by the grower, telling the public who and where the grower is, how their garlic is grown and what kinds of garlic they have available at what prices. Our present intention is that we will process credit card transactions and forward the full amount of the transactions, minus our commission, to the growers on a timely basis. Even though accepting credit cards can triple your sales, most small growers don't accept credit cards because they only sell for a month or two a year and credit card fees are a year-round thing. I propose to set it up so that the market will accept cards and give members a regular accounting. I also propose to give members a year round page so people will have all year long to get to know them and place orders for fall delivery. This will allow growers to communicate with people and get some idea of their market appeal and plan accordingly. I expect to continue signing up new growers throughout 2011 and will likely have over 20 growers online by year's end and the more growers, the more business everyone does, especially if the growers are pround of their webpages and send as many people to them as possible. I will no longer be a commercial grower of garlic but will maintain only a small personal garden. A local gardener will take over and grow it out himself and sell it on the farmers market. I do not want any grower to see me as a competitor but only as a facilitator and resource. We, Gourmet Garlic Gardens, will continue to sell only our special sampler assortments to give the customers tastes of the many different kinds so as to whet their appetites for more. I will not sell any bulk garlic orders myself with all bulk sales to going to the growers by having the customer buy direct from them using their credit card through our processing facilities. The garlic which will be used to fill sampler assortment orders will come from the growers and the grower's name and contact information, including the growers webpage address will be posted on each cultivar of garlic in the assortments in order to help make more sales for each gardener/grower. Customers will be urged to buy more of the ones they like direct from the grower at the grower's prices on ther grower's GGG webpage.

Why gardeners should want to sell through our marketplace. The bottom line is that We can put in a webpage for market gardeners where there is a greater drawing power than they could generate on their own. It's a well known fact that even if you have an excellent website, it doesn't mean much if you can't attract customers to it among the millions of websites on the internet. We've been on the internet for over 12 years now and are very highly placed in the search engines; depending on what words were used in the search, we're usually on the first page and often the very first listing. For example, if you search for "growing garlic", we fluctuate between #1 and #3 on Google, Yahoo and MSN and have been for years. It's hard to get much higher. Those who have websites can tell you how hard and expensive it is to get to the top of the search engines and that it takes many thousands of dollars invested and even any high placement is usually only for a short time before anonymity sets in again. Gourmetgarlicgardens.com has been steadily at the top of all the major search engines for about a decade now. While I can't predict the future, I doubt that will be changing much any time soon. By partnering with us your webpage can share our traffic. Our website attracts a lot of people, some of whom are customers looking for garlic to buy and our number of hits continues to increase every year. Our website has had over two million hits since 1997 and we had about 400,000 unique page views in 2009 and we expect around 500,000 in 2010 as the number of hits per day continues to increase as more and more people find our website and tell their friends. Over 1600 other websites link to us and this continues to help keep us highly placed in the search engines. We receive a lot of free publicity each year in newspaper and magazine stories by writers who have found our website to be attractive and uncommonly informative. In the past few years we have been recommended by the NY times, Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle among many others and Forbes, Organic Gardening, Mother Earth News and many other magazines. In 2009 the AP wrote a story about garlic and mentioned us favorably and sent it to every newspaper in the country. Also a video about us is now circulating all around the country on the RFD-TV channel and we're getting some response from that. Texas Gardener magazine published their second article about us and the garlic in their Sept/Oct. 2007 issue. I find our website being increasingly mentioned in books providing us with publicity for years to come. There will almost certainly be more. Many thousands of people come to our website each year, some looking for information and some looking to buy garlic. We will send those looking to buy garlic directly to our market gardeners' webpages. I believe partnering with many market gardeners will help our website , the growers and the customers, all - everyone wins, no losers. I also believe we are the best opportunity small remotely located market gardeners have to increase their customer base to the whole USA and increase sales and profits. I also believe that by eliminating the middleman, me, and reducing the transportation costs by having the market gardener ship directly to the consumer/gardener, the prices will come down somewhat, allowing for lower consumer prices. I also believe that public demand for these gourmet garlics is increasing very rapidly and the marketing opportunities are vast and that people will be looking more to the internet even to shop locally and will prefer to purchase as close to home as possible. I also believe that as the public learns more about the pharmacological properties of garlic, the demand will increase. I also believe we are on the ground floor of a business that will continue to grow at a rapid rate and lots of money will be made by those prepared for the opportunity. Finally, I believe the American public is sick and tired of grocery store garlic and are eagerly willing to pay extra for superior quality, toxin-free, non-irradiated garlic. I recommend all market gardeners have their own private website that is their interface to the internet. Market gardeners should use their small webpages on our farmers market as their cash register to the internet. The webpages are strictly short sales sites and you should link to your GGG farmers market webpage from your private website as your sales outlet. Market gardeners should give out their cash register webpage address to everyone and generate as much traffic to their webpage as possible and not advertise lower prices on their personal website. The selling function of the webpages will only be active when growers have garlic to send unless they wish to accept advance orders. The webpages themselves may be left up yearound so as to allow many potential customers to become familiar with the growers and enhance sales prospects for the coming season. The small scale growers I have met generally have had a cooperative attitude toward other growers and bought and sold among themselves as well as the public. Most seemed to be consciencious growers and there has been an emphasis on organics and general sustainability. Together we will be able to find ways to serve the steadily increasing Gourmet Garlic marketplace and live long and prosper with it. If you have been looking for a niche market of some kind where you could make some extra money via the internet, this may be your best chance if you are consciencious enough to grow superior garlic.

Rules, Requirements and Qualifications There always have to be some rules, regulations and qualifications to any enterprise or it gets out of hand in a hurry. Here are a few for starters and we'll adjust as we go: 1. All garlic must be domestically grown; that is, in the United States of America - no imports. I may later start an international garlic market but this first effort is for small scale sustainable American growers only. 2. All garlic must be grown employing sustainable earth-friendly, people-friendly methodology and without any use of manufactured chemical or refined petroleum products or commercial granular fertilizers containing any toxic substances. 3. All garlic offered to the public through the farmers market must be of high quality and free of pests and pathogens and guaranteed for 30 days by the grower. If any garlic turns out bad within 30 days after receipt by customer, grower must replace the garlic or refund the price of the garlic that went bad. 4. Gourmet Garlic Gardens reserves the right to reject any applicant for any reason it sees fit. We have worked too hard for too long to let anyone with lesser standards destroy up our great reputation and muddy the waters for all the good, consciencious market gardeners out there. 5. All cultivars offered for sale by a grower must actually be the cultivars claimed. 6. This farmers market is for small scale market gardeners who personally work with and pay close attention to their crop only, We only want those who take pride in their work and whose garlic shows it. 7. Mass commercial conventional growers of garlic are not eligible to participate; this market is only for small business market gardeners who work their own fields. 8. Gourmet Garlic Gardens reserves the right to discipline or cancel the webpage of any grower who is the subject of excessive customer complaints. More as they come to me. Other Considerations One of my chief concerns is garlic disease. Unfortunately, there are a few different garlic diseases and pests running around in this country and they're all over the place. I cannot in good conscience support or condone selling such garlic to the public knowing that they will plant it and infect their gardens with garlic diseases and/or pests. I do my best to educate growers at all levels on what pathogens and pests are and how to recognize them and suggest ways to deal with them sustainably. While I can't guarantee anyone else's garlic to be absolutely disease free planting stock, I want to do everything I can to see that it is, anyway. Sometimes garlic that looks, smells and feels good is diseased and the observer is fooled. But at least we're making a sincere effort to help growers learn how to avoid bad garlic. If small growers want sell small amounts of garlic via mail order, it is in their best interest to send only good, disease/pest-free garlic. If the garlic is good, the customer may want to buy more, if some of it is bad, they almost certainly won't. The small growers best advertisment is his/her garlic. People will naturally flock to great garlic; lousy garlic repels them - and should. Garlic is too good of a thing to grow poorly. Click here to learn more about garlic diseases and how to deal with them. As you can see, I am still trying to work out something that will be good for everyone, long term. Please e-mail me back with any ideas you have and let's continue to develop this. In the meantime I will communicate with many growers and maybe we can come up with something that will work. One thing is for sure - I have created a website that can sell more garlic than I can grow and I wish to share this resource with buyers and growers alike. It will also make many more varieties available than I can grow in my geographic location. Another sure thing is that I have a vested interest in seeing every grower who is chosen for the farmers market succeed. I expect to make a fair profit from this but I think every grower will make a lot more from me than I will from each of them and will open up new markets that will provide them with returning customers for years to come. I think our customers will be better served and get better prices as well. More to come soon. Everything is subject to change without notice.

Bob Anderson
Garlicmeister, a self-inflicted title for amusement only.
Photo courtesy of Bill Yeates.