How to Care for Elephant Ear Plants

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we are going to talk about how to care for elephant ears. Now elephant ears are beautiful plants. They are known as Colocasia and they are actually a food staple in 40% of the world. They actually use the bulbs as a food and you can make poi out of it or they make rice out of it or any type of bread too so there is lots of uses for elephant ears. Whether you live in the tropics or you live in the Northwest you can grow them almost anywhere in the world. They are really easy to grow. They don't like full hot sun so they do best in an area that is partly shaded. Now I have lost most of the leaves here and it is going to go dormant for the Winter. I have found though that they will live and look really good through the Fall until the really first heavy frost and they don't want to freeze too hard. They can go down to about 10 or 15 degrees. As long as they are mulched real well and they don't freeze too solid you don't lose them. So even in the Northwest if you cover them with mulch a lot of times you will never lose them but if they do get too wet and they freeze solid you can't so if you live in a climate where it is a little bit marginal you might dig them up and just store the bulbs dry for the Winter. So elephant ears don't have a bloom. They just have the gorgeous leaves and if you have got a shade garden that is nice and has dapple sun and it still gets really hot in the Summer there, they are a perfect pick and they look very tropical and they are a gorgeous garden plant."