Sorry! Haven't been around much lately! Things aren't going all that well. I planted the Portora in a shady area with a lot of light, and it's doing well. Both the Jack's Giant and Black Magic have been doing horribly. Before they arrived, I decided to play it safe and pot the two up and leave them in part-shade for a few weeks. When I received JG and BM, one leaf (of a pair) of each was dying, which needn't be unusual, but neither one of them were acclimatizing to pots in part shade. More sun for a few days? No improvement. For soil, I went with a half and half blend of leafy-soil and compost manure, figuring it'd provide a chance to adapt to native soil conditions, as well as providing something rich and retentive to work off of. Watered daily, insured there was good drainage. Neither of the two potted plants did anything. New leaf starts forming, old leaf dies. I decided to plant them out into part or full sun with a full bag of manure in the hole to grow in, and they've been bouncing back and forth, without any real improvements, despite full daily water and a small bit of Milorganite to start. The New Guinea Gold I'd picked up from Lowes is doing wonderfully, It was already a good 2ft in height when I purchased it, and it's added an additional 3 leaves since. It's planted in a semi-shady area, and I'm only watering it maybe once a week. Still have a lot of work to do. Haven't mulched anything yet, still adapting sections of the garden, etc. but I'll try to provide some pics soon. Oh, my original purchase of the 3 plants was from Plant Delights. I have nothing against the company, but I'm definitely not impressed with what I'd paid and received for the price. Since then, I've purchased Mojitos, Black Ruffles, and Illustris from Wellspring Gardens for a fraction of the price, and they're mostly doing well in the soil in shade. It's a learning process, what can I say? lol

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.

Hannah, Yellowing between the veins of older leaves generally indicates a lack of a transportable nutrient, such as Magnesium. What is the analysis of the Plantacote? It could be that it is too slow releasing for the needs of the A. x calidora. These plants are very vigorous and that means they need enough nutrients to sustain that growth. Otherwise, they will decline and die down or out. I give my host of Alocasia hybrids a soluble fert solution every week and I use a higher nitrogen mix as well, occasionally supplementing with extra iron and manganese. Even under these conditions, some of mine get a little pale from time to time, especially in the summertime growing months. Many, if not most, of these Alocasia like well draining soil mix as well, so if your soil is heavy and wet, that might be part of the problem. Healthy roots are a must for proper nutrient uptake. Hope this helps, LariAnn Garner Aroidia Research Here is a link that might be useful: Alocasia x calidora

@love_the_yard I was at the Lowes on Atlantic Blvd the other day and there were huge discount racks of all kinds of stuff. I got ground orchids 1 gallon for 3.00 -they are the orange flowered ones. No name on them except 'Ground Orchids' lol. I am pretty sure they are the tropical types and will have to overwinter in the gh in our zone grrr. I saw Belotti passiflora, white and pink mandevillea, and a bunch of annuals and other perennials on the discount racks. I think they were getting ready to put some 3 gal roses on there too because they were in the process of pulling them from the display and moving them to the discount area. I also saw some 3 gallon Sting Ray alocasias that were good size (I already had some of those). I might go back this weekend and see what's left on the discount racks though lol. We also have the 'wild' green alocasias on our property. Last summer one had a leaf as big as the hood of my car! I am thinking of making a huge fountain base or birdbath with a few leaves (concrete casting). They are soooo big! I don't like how they invade my flower beds but if there are few off by themselves somewhere they don't bother me. These things do reseed like crazy as well as make runners. The huge one by my car last year made about 50 seedlings. Hopefully most of them froze cuz I only see about 10 over there now. I keep my Mickey Mouse Taro in pots. It likes to go out the holes in the bottom of the pots and start new plants all over the place lol. It is definitely the cutest EE !! I saw some at the Ace Hardware in Mandarin that were obviously MM taro but they had them labeled as "Variegated Sting Ray" and a big "WOW!!" marked on the sign in front of them. Reminds me of the ebay seller ads. That Ace is normally a great place to find unusual things (in their gh) so I was kinda surprised at the mislabeling. I got a 3 gallon black Bat Plant last year. It was great and flowered nicely then one of the dumb roosters came and ate up the blooms grr. It is still doing good and overwintered in the gh where I only light the heater when it goes under 32F. So I think they are a little hardier than zone 10b/11. I have another baby black one and a baby white bat that overwintered in my somewhat cool gh as well. ~SJN