All varieties
Creole garlic
The mild-winter group.
Good for long storage, roasting whole heads, raw heat and most plants per pound of seed.
By winter
- Frozen hard for weeks. Not for the coldest winters, and stays small where the ground freezes hard. Best where winters are mild.
- Frost, then thaw, repeatedly. Grows where frost comes and goes, and does best with a warm summer.
- Rare or brief frost. Made for mild winters.
Where winters are mild, Creole is one of the groups extension services recommend.
At a glance
- Neck
- Between hardneck and softneck, with a weak scape
- Keeps
- 9 to 12 months
- Cloves per bulb
- 5 to 12, on the small side
- Flavor
- Sweet, and pleasant eaten raw.
- Braiding
- No
- Harvest
- Mid
- Seed per pound
- About 80 plants per pound of seed.
Varieties to order
Ajo Rojo
Hardneck · Keeps 10 to 12 months · Mid harvest
Order from Filaree Hood River
What each supplier says
- Group
- Creole (Filaree)
Creole (Hood River) - Neck
- hard (Filaree)
hard (Hood River) - Cloves per bulb
- 8 to 12 (Filaree)
8 to 10 (Hood River) - Per pound
- 8 to 10 bulbs/lb (Filaree)
45 to 50 cloves/lb (Hood River) - Keeps
- 10 to 12 months (Filaree)
10 to 11 months (Hood River) - Flavor
- Creamy roasted, intensely hot raw (Filaree)
Sweet with a spicy finish (Hood River) - Climate
- Hot-Humid, Southern (Filaree)
Zones 5 to 10 (Hood River) - Harvest
- Mid (Filaree)
- Scapes
- Yes (Hood River)
Creole Red
Hardneck · Keeps 6 to 7 months · Mid harvest
Order from Filaree Hood River
What each supplier says
- Group
- Creole (Filaree)
Creole (Hood River) - Neck
- hard (Hood River)
- Cloves per bulb
- 8 to 12 (Hood River)
- Per pound
- 42 to 50 cloves/lb (Hood River)
- Keeps
- 6 to 7 months (Hood River)
- Flavor
- Medium, hearty and smooth, palatable raw (Hood River)
- Climate
- Zones 5 to 10 (Hood River)
- Harvest
- Mid (Hood River)
Burgundy
Hardneck · Keeps 10 to 12 months · Mid harvest
Order from Filaree
What each supplier says
- Group
- Creole (Filaree)
- Neck
- hard (Filaree)
- Cloves per bulb
- 8 to 12 (Filaree)
- Per pound
- 8 to 10 bulbs/lb (Filaree)
- Keeps
- 10 to 12 months (Filaree)
- Flavor
- Sweet, Mild-Spicy (Filaree)
- Climate
- Hot-Humid, Southern (Filaree)
- Harvest
- Mid (Filaree)
Rose de Lautrec
Hardneck · Keeps 10 to 12 months · Mid harvest
Order from Filaree
What each supplier says
- Group
- Creole (Filaree)
- Neck
- hard (Filaree)
- Cloves per bulb
- 8 to 12 (Filaree)
- Per pound
- 8 to 10 bulbs/lb (Filaree)
- Keeps
- 10 to 12 months (Filaree)
- Flavor
- Mild, Elegant, Complex (Filaree)
- Climate
- Hot-Humid, Southern (Filaree)
- Harvest
- Mid (Filaree)
What the catalogs say
The mild-winter answer, and a long keeper by catalog copy: Hood River gives nine to ten months, Filaree ten to twelve. Solid purple cloves and a sweet flavor that holds up raw. Ajo Rojo was the only cultivar in the twelve-farm trial that growers rated Excellent. Filaree notes bulbs rarely reach two inches in northern climates. Sometimes sold as Mexican Purple in the southwest. Varieties include Ajo Rojo, Burgundy, Creole Red, Keeper.
Neck type is contested. Filaree sells it as hardneck while writing that Creoles are genetically softneck Silverskins that bolt weakly. Boundary files it under weakly bolting hardnecks. Alaska Fairbanks calls it softneck. Underrepresented in the USDA genetic study.