Ail de Pays du Gers
Creole Group
Hardneck – Weakly Bolting
This garlic is not the same as the garlic of this or similar names in countries other than Australia. It can only be tracked back as far as Garlic Farm Sales in the mid 1990s. It is now grown in SA for Digger’s.
General Information
| Other Names |
Pays du Gers, Ail de Gers |
| International Names |
None known. |
| Flavour |
Hot and spicey when raw, and still spicey when cooked. |
| Storage |
Long to 12 months. |
| Growing location |
Like other Creoles this garlic grows best in hot dry regions such as Northern SA and Victoria, Southern NSW and central WA. It also does well in Tasmania. |
| Growing requirements |
It will grow in most regions but doesn't like high humidity, and does best in regions with hot, dry spring and summer. |
| Planting and harvest |
Plant mid season, harvest mid season and late. |
Bulb
| Shape |
Small to medium globe with a concave base. 5-5.5 cm.
|
| Skin colour and texture |
Solid, strong white skins with a pink blush showing through when first harvested, but curing to white.
|
Clove
| Number and layout |
9-13 cloves in one or two layers.
|
| Size and shape |
Tall cloves with a sharply angled inner surface. 2.5-3 cm tall x 1-1.5 cm wide, they are slightly wider from the centre to the outside than the Rojos and Dynamite Purple.
|
| Skin colour and texture |
Red purple with cream stripes from the base
|
Plant
| Size and shape |
Typical Creole, tall and slender with mid green to blue-green leaves.
|
| Leaves |
Leaves usually upright and angled about 40° from the pseudostem; lower, older leaves will bend down from the middle.
|
| Young plants |
Slender and upright.
|
| Matures |
Matures slowly and deliberately.
|
| Scape |
Relatively strong scape although still classed as weakly bolting. Forms and upside-down U.
|
| Umbel and beak |
Slender small umbel with a long beak
|
| Bulbils and flowers |
No flowers. 50 or more rice grain sized bulbils, pointy at both ends, red and white.
|
