Interesting. I have grown grocery store taro for the past two seasons and I was thinking of ordering "elephant ears - colocasia esculenta" from Lindenberg seeds. It sounds like it might be very similar to grocery store taro. Unless, of course, the nursery plant has bigger leaves or is a specific cultivar (though it sounds like Lindenberg has the plain green one and doesnÂt mention a specific cultivar). I guess it Âthrew me a bit and I thought I was ordering a different plant because their description mentions something about "small magenta pink flowers rise above the foliage". Does this plant bloom? Maybe itÂs one of those plants that "might" bloom if itÂs old and grown in a greenhouse. Regarding grocery store taro, I found them easy to grow. I bought my roots at superstore and at safeway. Look for bigger sized bulbs with signs of growth, or 'eyes'. I think bigger roots do better than smaller ones, just my feeling. I like shorter Âchubby roots. I potted them in large drinking cups and transplanted out near the end of May. They were only 8 inches tall at most when I planted out, but grew to 3 feet high by the end of summer. They like moisture and part sun, which was the ideal place on my north side of the house. During a wet spell, this area doesnÂt dry out very much in between waterings. They didnÂt seem to be that fussy about soil, I basically dug a hole a bit bigger than the bulb and roots and plunked them into the ground into clay soil (that was mucky at the time). I planted them in between perennial lamium and it looked kind of tropical. Regards, Glen

Marcia, I don't live/garden in zone 6 so I can't give you an answer that is as complete as I'd like it to be. In zone 7, my elephant ears overwinter in the ground and survive most, but not all, winters. The only time they don't survive is if the weather is really, really wet at the same time that the temperatures are really cold. So, here in southern OK, the elephant ears can, for example, handle really wet weather in Nov. and Dec. when we are still pretty warm, but really wet weather in the Jan.-Mar. (and sometimes April, if it is a cold April) time frame can sometimes kill them. A lot depends on the type of soil you have and how well it drains. If your soil has a high clay content and drains very slowly, and stays very wet and soggy, the elephant ear bulbs are at risk of rotting. If your soil has a high sandy or sandy loam content and drains well, the bulbs have a higher chance of survival. Mulching the bulbs well helps protect them from the cold, but also helps the soil retain moisture which would be a problem if your soil stays wet for a prolonged period of time and drains slowly. I don't know many people who have success overwintering the bulbs indoors in peat moss. It can be done, but you have to make sure they have enough moisture and humidity that they don't dry out too much, shrivel up and die....and yet, not so much moisture that they are too damp and rot. Some people overwinter them indoors in a pot of soil set in a cool dry location like an unheated closet and don't water them at all until the soil almost completely dries out. Even then, you would only water enough to keep the soil a little moist, but not wet. If you happen to have an unheated basement or a tornado shelter, either of those places might be a good place to overwinter tender bulbs and tubers either in pots of soil or in peat moss. I use lots of chopped-up leaves for mulch (and use bark mulch as well) and have never had disease issues because of it, but I am in a dry area that has only 30-34" of rain in a good year, and as little as 18-26" of rain in a bad year. I think that the likelihood of fungal and bacterial diseases overwintering in the leaves increases in areas with higher rainfall. But, if your leaves came from trees that didn't have foliar disease issues, I wouldn't worry about it. And, here's a tip about buying elephant ears the next time you need/want some. You can go into an Oriental grocery store or a higher end natural or organic grocery store (like Wild Oats, Central Market, Whole Foods, etc.) and go to the produce section and purchase tubers/bulbs there. They are sold under several names including taro and malanga. I bought a bag of them, sold under the name 'malanga' at a Whole Foods store in Arlington, Texas, several years ago for maybe $3.00 or $4.00 a pound. I got 20 or 30 small (each about the size of a small plum) tubers, planted them, and figured I'd have big plants in a few years. I had huge plants with huge leaves the very first year, which was a very pleasant surprise. So, there's no need to pay $5 each for the larger bulbs unless you just want to. Here in southern OK, the ones I have in sandier loam in raised beds survive all but the wettest winters. The ones in heavier clay may or may not survive a very wet winter, but we only get a winter like that once or twice a decade here. And, one very, very dry winter, I lost some of them to exceptional drought because it didn't rain and I didn't water that part of the yard. Hopefully someone who's actually grown these in zone 6 will respond and let you know if they overwinter theirs in the ground or indoors, because my experience is of limited benefit to you since I garden in an area a full zone warmer. Good luck, Dawn

I live in the foothills of western North Carolina (Zone 7) and planted an elephant ear plant last year and did great all spring and summer. When the leaves died back, I cut them back and covered it over with mulch. So far, nothing's emerged. Should I be concerned? Here it is April 10th; or do you think it'll start to send out leaves later on?

In mid August 2 of my Elephant Ears reached 6 feet tall. I just water them a lot and apply Expert Gardener Plant Food 15-30-15 every 3 weeks. I turned the soil and added about 20% top soil but they're in mostly clay. They get 3/4 to 1/2 day sun respectively. Colocasia Esculenta 'Black Magic' - I got this in June 2016 and it was in a 1 gallon pot and about 18" tall. It got to about 4 1/2 ft tall 4 mos later with 3 tubers and 3 pups. But it was crowded by 2 other E. Ears. Then in Oct it wintered indoors without much sun. During that winter the base stem/trunk circumference went from about 19" to 7" and it went down to only 2 leggy leaves. Right now it has an 18" base circumference with about 10 tubers and 5 pups. It seems the new leaves with their stems continue to grow until the 2nd subsequent new leaf has unfurled. It's leaves shed water as if they were wax. Water just rolls right off. It's impossible to get them wet: Alocasia Macrorrhizos 'Black Stem' - I got this in the spring and it was about 2' tall in a 2 gal pot. Sometimes when breezes come through it makes creaking noises like an old wooden ship deck creaking or vinyl rubbing together. I occasionally forget that when I'm near it and the noise startles me: