Here at High Mowing, we understand how essential a reliable and productive garlic crop is in a garden or on a farm. We take our job of sourcing high quality, organic garlic very seriously and it is for that reason that garlic is one of the trickier seed items we manage in our warehouse. We know how frustrating it is not to receive the seed that you ordered and to receive an out of stock email. The timeline for garlic seed is naturally compressed- it is harvested by our contract growers in late summer, then cured and culled by them, before being packed and shipped to us.   Once we receive the garlic, we must then inspect, test, and pack the garlic seed before shipping it to you. Because the garlic is still arriving at our warehouse when we begin shipping orders, the amount of time that we have between receiving, sending out for testing, and then shipping garlic to our customers is very short. This unfortunately gives us little time to communicate to our customers when we have quality control issues.  We want to let you know that we are changing how we manage garlic to make your experience better. Below are some steps we are taking to make improvements:
  • We are moving all of our garlic contracts to western states where the presence Garlic Bloat Nematode (GBN) is less common. GBN have caused the bulk of our quality issues.
  • Starting now, we will be taking pre-orders for up to 60% of our inbound garlic, and then we will stop selling that variety.
    • This will allow us to quality check, fill orders, and have some left over in case any one variety doesn’t pass our quality check. 
  • Once we receive our garlic, we will perform our normal quality control process. 
  • Once it passes this check, we will pack and ship pre-orders. 
  • Anything left over will be made available on our website in late September through early October.
Our hope is that we can mitigate the Out of Stocks that have impacted some our growers' garlic experience for the past few years. Every lot of seed that we offer is subject to our rigorous quality control testing and Garlic Bloat Nematode has been our biggest challenge. You can find more information on garlic bloat nematode on our blog: Garlic Bloat Nematodes and You. As with all of our seed, there will always be some varieties out of stock, which is the nature of farming. We are confident that by taking pre-orders for only 60% of what we expect to have, we are less likely to disappoint customers who are expecting to receive garlic.  We understand that garlic is an important part of your farms and gardens. We also understand that some of our customers have been impacted by disappointing garlic availability in recent years. We are dedicated to continuing to refine our systems so we can always provide high quality, organic garlic seed to our customers.