Thanks so much Debbie for replying to my post. I think I see what I did wrong last year---I continued to water as usual because I knew that the elephant ears liked moisture. I did not reduce the water to trigger dormancy as you suggested. Our average frost date is mid October. I have noticed that the nights are cooler than before and the day temperatures are lower too. I think it will be time soon to stop watering. I will cut the top off and check on the bulb. I wouldn't want to bring it in with its pot (too big) and then find out it had rotted! My other elephant ears are smaller. I think I will pick one of them to keep as a houseplant. The only worry I have (besides bulb rot) is fungus gnats since the soil likes to be kept moist. The other three elephant ears I'll keep in their pots, but stop watering until spring. I sure hope this all works out! Thanks so much! By the way, Illustris is a lovely elephant ear. . . don't you think?

I have a similar problem with my zucchini and cucumbers. My zucchini have gotten white spots on the leaves and some of them had died. I kept getting the fruit and as a new gardener, I didn't worry about it. After a week or two I noticed that most of the branches were dying and when I lifted some, the stem broke just above the ground. It was rotted through. All three of my plants have died and I removed them all from the garden. We have had a wet summer and I may have over watered them, though my soil drains pretty well. Next, my neighbor's cucumbers (which are separated from my garden by a link fence) have all withered and died. I am now noticing spots on my cucumber leaves, some have even become holes, and the vines are beginning to wither. Is there anything I can do to prevent further damage or what can I do to prevent this problem next year? Should I spray milk on them?

Last year, my bulbs were in lawless conditions. I bought a children pool and put them in it in their pots. It was easier to water them this way. I just poured the water in and they all got some. But then some rains came and completely drenched the bulbs. They were neck up to the water and they stayed that way for a long time by the time I noticed it and let the water away. So I ended up with most of the bulbs shrunk to tiny bulblets that I didn't think would even survive. Then I had to move to the new house, so I unpotted them, cut the leaves and put them in the new wine cooler I bought for this purpose to make sure that the bulbs do not freeze down. A month later I noticed that the wine cooler froze down and even killed about 10 bulbs. I returned it to the store and just bought a huge standing fridge that had the freezer part separately. I kept my bulbs in that fridge. Then I planted them up from Summer, hoping that they would still come back to me. And to my amazement: More than 50 percent FLOWERED! They shrunk, they were sitting in water, they froze down, they were in dormancy for a half a year or LONGER, and they BLOOMED! I am still floored by some of them. Now, they are out in the flower bed, fattening up. I hope they enjoy the situation. So you see, once they want to bloom, they just bloom, even if they kill themselves.

Thanks very much for providing that information. I've made mistakes with this one, but I will continue to grow them, as the are truly spectacular! Here is a link that might be useful: Our Community Garden Website