Irish Eyes Garden Seeds

Irish Eyes - Garden City Seeds has little serious competition because the storage, handling, and shipment of our products are much more demanding than selling ordinary garden seed. If you will take time to tell us how you prefer your order is handled, we will make every possible effort to comply with your wishes. If you do not do this, we will do the best for you that we know how to do, based on our experience and our knowledge of the growing conditions in your area.

Ordering Basics

Delivery to Post Office Boxes
Please give us your street address. UPS Ground cannot deliver to a post office box. Rural route/star route addresses DO qualify for UPS Ground delivery.

Method of Payment
We accept personal checks, money orders, Mastercard or VISA. Mailing cash is not recommended.

Shipping Basics

Orders Over 50 Pounds
IMPORTANT: The most weight we can put into a box is 50 pounds. If your order exceeds 50 pounds, divide the weight. For example - a 75 pound order must be shipped in two(2) boxes, one of 50 pounds and another of 25 pounds. Orders weighing 200 pounds or more will receive discounted bulk rates and will be shipped on a truck, freight collect.

Winter Shipping
We can guarantee your potatoes will not freeze if we ship them from November - February in an insulated box which can hold 12 lbs. Which cost an additional $7.00. For every twelve pound purchased add one winter box through the Boxes catagory in the store.

International Orders
Please call 1-509-964-7000 to place your international orders. Please be aware, due to international restrictions, depending on where you are ordering from some or all of our products may not be available for you to order.

Miscellaneous Ordering Information For Ordering Seed Potatoes

Requested Shipping Date
Seed potatoes are "hibernating" living plants that should not be subjected to extreme variances in temperature and humidity. Thought at rest, the seed potato is still carrying on vital life functions - particularly respiration. If you must hold onto your seed potatoes for any length of time before planting, please open the package so they can breathe. To preserve their vigor you must also keep them quite cool and protect them from dehydration.

For most purposes, it is best to let us store your seed potatoes in our climate controlled warehouse until a month before your planting time. Specify a shipping date for your potatoes about two or three weeks before you will want them to arrive for planting. We know you can depend on UPS Ground to bring your order to you safely and quickly; we ship thousands of UPS Ground orders each spring.

Southern Gardener-Winter Shipping Dates:
We understand that gardeners in the South and Southwest can plant while it is still deep winter in the North. The UPS Ground routes from Thorp, Washington, to almost anywhere go through some of the coldest winter weather in the country. But if seed potatoes and most other living plant materials like shallots and garlic, freeze, they are completely ruined.

Consequently, during February and March we have to scrutinize weather maps daily and ponder about whether or not to ship. At times during this season we will be holding on to many small parcels, preserved in the safety of our cold-store, awaiting a window of opportunity to open in the national weather pattern.

So if you do wish to plant during February or March, it can be to your great advantage to specify shipment a month or more earlier than your planting date. This gives us enough time to slip your order through to you between blizzards. And having a month to chit your seed will help you too, because in midwinter our seed potatoes are still quite dormant. Pre-sprouting them for a couple of weeks in your warm home will greatly accelerate their emergence once you do plant them out.

Many experienced market gardeners (and some garden centers) in the South who order seed potatoes from us - people whose financial well-being depends on having seed potatoes in good shape when they know they will need them - request shipment in the fall and plan to warehouse their own potatoes.

The easiest way to store up to 150 pounds of seed for a few months is in an old-fashioned refrigerator that is not frost free. These old clunkers stay humid inside and so do not desiccate the potatoes. Seed potatoes can be held for several months at about 40 degrees F. in paper bags or boxes in one of these. Modern frost free models stay frost free by drying out the air within. In self-defrosting model your potatoes will have to be held in plastic bags with some small holes punched in them (like supermarket carrot bags). And in either case, the door to the refrigerator should be opened every few days and kept open for a few minutes to exchange the air within (remember, your potatoes are breathing).

Substitutions/Shortages
After last years very successful catalog we increased our potato planting acreage to the limit that our own seed stock would permit. For many of the most popular varieties we should have no trouble filling orders to whatever extent we get them.

There is no guarantee, however, that we will be able to fill all the orders we get for every variety we have. Please indicate a second choice or acceptable substitutions. If you do not do this and if you do not mark your order no substitutions, we will make that decision for you according to our own understanding of the varieties you ordered and which other one(s) will serve the same purposes.

Limited Quantities (LQ)
Some of our varieties are abundant, available in BULK orders of 50 pounds or more to farmers and gardeners. Fingerling varieties may also be available in bulk bags and these will be in lots of 50 pounds as well.

With other varieties, only limited quantities are available. These will only be sold in amounts less than 10 pounds per customer. Please do not order more than the maximum amount offered to each customer.

Please note: If you are ordering late in the season, some limited-quantity varieties may be sold out. When ordering an item that is not available in 50 pound lots, it is wise to always indicate a substitute.

If you request no substitutions and we are sold out of something we will issue you a credit.

Advantages Of Ordering Early
Irish Eyes has modernized. We now have a computerized order entry and shipping system. As each order is received it is keypunched. The computer knows our starting inventory or each item. But, potatoes are a perishable commodity and inventory can change rapidly without our knowledge. As each order is received, the quantities in that order are deducted from the starting stock in our cold-storage. Instantly, that seed is assigned, even if it is scheduled for shipment months later. Once your seed is reserved on our computer, it is yours. However, due to potatoes being highly perishable in the months of May/June, the later you want your order shipped the more chance there is of not getting what you chose.

The computer also knows when each order or each part of each order is to be shipped. Thus, there is no problem within our system about handling split-shipments and/or multiple shipping dates. Just remember each shipment has a separate shipping and handling charge.

Shipping Dates By Species
Generally, potatoes are shipped in spring. Generally, garlic and shallots are shipped late in summer for fall planting. In certain parts of the country some onion-family crops are spring sown. And in the deep South, potatoes are best in-hand before winter comes in the North.

Irish Eyes is set up to arrange all of these matters and to schedule shipment or each part of your order just as you would like it. But, we can only do this if you tell us when you want each item to arrive. So, when filling out your order form, please make sure to tell us exactly when you want to receive each item.