Elephant Ear

Start corms in pots indoors before your last frost

Six to eight weeks before your last frost, pot each corm in a large container of rich, moist media with the top of the corm just under the soil surface, and hold it somewhere warm and bright until the weather settles. Do not set corms straight into cold spring ground. Corms need eight to ten months of warm growing to size up, and the plant sulks and stalls when temperatures sit below 50F for long stretches, so a head start indoors buys the season length a corm crop needs.

Plant out corms once frost danger has passed and the soil is warm

Set corms, cormels, or huli sets at least 6 inches deep, spaced 18 to 24 inches apart in rows 18 to 24 inches apart, in deep friable loam at pH 5.5 to 6.5 with compost worked in. Avoid rocky or stony ground, which deforms the corms and makes digging them a fight. The harvested corm is the plant's own swelling stem, so it takes the shape of whatever the soil lets it take, and crowded or shallow plantings give you many small corms instead of a few good ones.

⚠ Colocasia esculenta is invasive in wetlands along the American Gulf Coast, where it displaces native wetland plants, and Florida lists it as a Category I invasive. Keep it out of ponds, ditches, and stream margins where it can escape, and check your own state's list before planting near water.

Hold the soil at field capacity all season, never dry

Keep the soil moist but drained, at or near field capacity, for the whole growing period, by furrow, sprinkler, or drip. Taro tolerates prolonged waterlogging and can be grown standing in shallow water, but dasheen types should not sit waterlogged for any extended length of time. Water availability drastically affects corm yield, and this is a plant built for warm, moist ground rather than a crop that shrugs off drought.

Side-dress three times across the long season

Work 2.75 to 3 lb of 7-30-20 or 10-20-20 per 100 square feet into the bed before planting, then side-dress 1 lb of 16-16-16 per 100 square feet at two, four, and six months after planting. Have your soil tested if you want rates matched to your own ground rather than these poor-soil figures. This is a hungry crop on a very long clock, and the corm is bulking right through the back half of the season, so a single spring feeding runs out long before harvest.

Scout petioles and young leaves for leafhoppers and aphids

Check the petioles for scattered brown to black spots, which are stains from sap oozing out of leafhopper puncture holes, and look over the young leaves for aphid colonies. Treat only if the numbers are genuinely large, not on sight of a few insects. Taro leafhopper and aphids feed by sucking sap from petioles and leaf blades, but they rarely do real damage unless they build to high numbers, so most sightings need watching rather than spraying.

⚠ If you do treat, read the label and confirm the product is registered for taro or dasheen before using it; the taro root aphid lives below ground and is not well controlled by spraying at all.

Watch for Phytophthora leaf blight in wet weather

After wet spells, look for purplish to brownish circular water-soaked spots on the leaves that exude a clear yellow liquid, and pull off and remove badly blighted leaves. Also watch the crown for dry rot from Sclerotium rolfsii and for phyllosticta leaf spot, which mostly show up in poorly managed plantings. Leaf blight is driven almost entirely by climate rather than the calendar, flaring in wet seasons and fading through dry months, so rain is the trigger to inspect, not a date.

⚠ Extension recommends fungicides for leaf blight but does not name an active ingredient for home gardens; check the label lists taro or dasheen before using any product, and add a wetting agent only if the label allows it.

Lift and store corms anywhere colder than zone 8

Outside its hardy range, dig the corms once frost has knocked the foliage back, lift them gently with a fork so the skin is not pierced, dry them a few days out of the sun, and bury them in peat, sand, or vermiculite somewhere above 45F. Check them monthly, cut away any soft spots, and let the cut dry before re-storing. This is a tender tropical perennial hardy only to about zone 8a, and a corm that freezes or that rots around an unnoticed wound is simply gone by spring.

⚠ Do not store these near food. Handling cut corms can irritate skin because of the oxalate crystals, so gloves are worth wearing.

Dig corms when the leaves yellow and the petioles shorten

Expect harvest 8 to 10 months after planting. The plant tells you: leaves turn yellowish, petioles shorten to under 2 feet, and the corms start to protrude from the ground. Dasheen is ready once most cormels have gone dormant and the leaves have dried. Young leaves can be picked at any point during growth without lifting the plant. Maturity shifts with your location, variety, soil fertility, and water, so the plant's own decline is a far better signal than any month on a calendar.

⚠ Every part of this plant is toxic raw because of needle-like calcium oxalate crystals, which burn and swell the lips, mouth, tongue, and throat. Corms and leaves must be cooked thoroughly before anyone eats them, and raw material should be kept away from children and pets.