I just tried the EE the first time this summer, someone gave me a huge bulb. It grew lightning fast to start with, then I began experiencing the same problems you are having. The water just seemed to lay on top and slowly bubble down through and I couldn't seem to water it enough. I decided to put it in the flower bed as we were going on vacation and there was no one here to water it. When I removed it from the pot, I was in shock as to how rootbound it was. It has only been in the pot 2 months and was already seriously rootbound. It is doing much better since it is planted in the ground. I know I will have to dig it in the fall, but next year I will use a MUCH larger pot. Arlene

These are my notes on my first full year of dealing with my EE's, including last year's overwintering. Still I'm looking for additional overwintering tips, especially for the black EE's, of which I have quite a few. As you can see from the 'time lapse' picture series below, our Elephant Ears did pretty well this year. Once the weather here in Ohio heated up (mid 80's), the EE's added approximately 4 feet of growth during the month of August. After a frost last night (October 28), they now look awful and I'm digging them up and heading them to the basement. This will be the 2nd winter I'll be attempting to overwinter them. While I was successful with overwintering last year, I'm still hesitant that I will do something wrong. I'll describe what I did last year and any additional hints and tips would be much appreciated. The large plant pictured below was very simply, dug up and the clump put into a pot and placed in our basement which gets very little light. I watered them pretty regularly for a while but they declined until I got lazy (plus the mites set in) and quit watering and they completely dried out. Come spring they started putting up some shoots even though they were bone dry, presumably from all the energy stored in the corms. When it warmed further, the clump (and two others) was moved outside where it grew into the monster pictured. (it, and the other two, ended up about 7 feet tall with a 3 foot base and maintained about 60-70 leaves all year, with the largest leaves reaching about 5 feet long) I feel that just letting it dry out will be the way to go this year. However, I have concerns about the approximately 70 other smaller EE plants (especially the approx. 40 black plants) I have. They have been growing in pots in standing water rather than in the ground like my regular EE's. From the other posts, I'm afraid that my black EE's will suffer or die if they dry out. I do have to add that last year I had about 20 small black EE's (a couple varieties) that I carried into the basement which got the same treatment as the large green Colocasia's (watered for a while then let dry out). I did get a pretty decent number that died but still quite a few that sprung back up once they were taken outside once the weather warmed. I don't want to lose half because I have a larger number this year. Quite simply, should they be kept moist all winter even in the low-light conditions? I'll probably have more to add but this is already long so I leave it here for now. Thanks everyone.

Lee, If you want to see esculenta in zone 5 go to webshots.com and look for 'cheerpeople' photo album titled 'purple and orange garden'. There is a huge one there with my son in the pic. It is in full sun. There are also pics of odora with the months labelled. They do their best in the fall when they'd had 30 days above 86 degrees. Do you realized we have only 30-40 days above 86 here? No wonder this tropical need to be in full sun here!! Don't expect the plants to get as huge as down south when they winter outside. Think of it like a first year perennnial- it just doesn't get that big the first year- and every year in this zone is like a first year! Esculenta was it's biggest its' FIRST summer- in subeiquent years it made more and more babies and was finally was too small to survive winter storage. Due to fussiniess with winter storage, or small leaves-- I have tried and given up on all colocasia. this includes'purple stem', 'illustris', 'black magic', and 'esculenta', I also given up on 'macrorhiza', and an bad version of 'hilo beauty' which never got big leaves here. The only ones I grow now are ALOCASIA 'odora' and 'portodora' (and if I hadn't paid so much for portodora I probably would have gotten rid of it by now) I don't know on the staple- never been a problem I guess. One little tip on propagating- don't seperate the babies to trade or gifts- until they are 30% the size of the parent plant. Two inch tall ones- just don't make it on their own. Emial me directly if you have more ?'s as I won't check back \good luck, Karen

Loretta, I have 4 siam ruby reds, that I left outside thruout the winter. I covered them in February when we had the 2 weeks of freezing weather. I covered them with a sheet and bungie cord, with 4 inches of mulch. All 4 made it thru the freezes. The one that I planted on the South side of the house, did not even freeze back, it is doing great, its about 4ft tall, and has pups. The 2 I planted on the East side, did not freeze back to the ground, but did have to be cut back, they are about 2 ft tall right now, no pups. The one I planted on the North side froze back to the ground, it is slowly coming back. I did not know where to plant them, so I planted them on diffrent sides, the one on the south side, seemed to multiply much faster then the other 3. I have a sprinkler system, so they were watered every other day, even when it froze. This is zone 9b coastal, Rockport Texas. I hope this information helps you. Barbra