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Overwintering Colocasia Gigantea

If you read this blog over the summer you'd know that I was very happy with my purchase of a Colocasia Gigantea Thailand Strain (Giant Elephant Ear). Watching it grow from a little stick into a behemoth with five foot leaves was a lot of fun and very interesting for me.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it once the cold weather came but I had ideas of letting it dry out and storing the bulb in my garage. Well that didn't happen at all because I smashed it.

While trying to move the plant and it's 100 plus pounds of planter and soil over to my pool (hey I wanted a more tropical look) I dropped it down some concrete steps. Ooops! Most of the leaves snapped off and I thought that was the end of it. It was really sad looking.


But with less leaves, it became a much smaller plant. So into the house it went. There was no way that a 7 foot tall potted plant could have fit in my living room but my accidental alterations changed that. My living room has very little natural light in it but I figured that since the Elephant Ear does well in the shade, that it would be okay.


And it did better than okay. A few new leaves shot up and it even flowered. The flowers look a lot like peace lily flowers although they're a lot bigger.


I keep cutting off leaves so that it fits in my house. It really doesn't look great as a house plant but I'm just happy that it survived the fall and it's making it through the winter.

This summer my elephant ear is getting a prime location by the pool. I just may need some help moving it there.

5 Comments:

  1. Colleen Vanderlinden said...
    LOL Anthony--I'm sorry---I'm positive it wasn't funny at all at the time. Personally, a tirade of four-letter words would have been coming out of my mouth if it happened to me :-) As it is, I can relate to a little garden clumsiness...although yours is understandable...at least it was heavy. Last night, I just knocked every single houseplant off of the windowsill over my kitchen sink while I was closing the blinds. They're all looking pretty miserable this morning. My husband is starting to recommend non-breakable pots for all of my gardening adventures....
    Anthony said...
    If someone can invent non-breakable pots, they'll be rich in no time.

    Although with the size of this plant, I probably needed a pot with a built in air bag.
    Colleen Vanderlinden said...
    There's always plastic or fiberglass, I guess. But I'm a traditionalist (in this, at least). I tend to stick to terracotta...some glazed ceramic pots, but mostly terracotta.

    I might try a colocasia this year, actually. I have a ton of shade in my yard.

    And, if someone invents a pot with a built-in airbag, THEN they'll be rich :-)
    Carol Michel said...
    I did the same thing with a pot of elephant ears a few years ago. I was lugging it to the garage to overwinter the bulb and the pot rolled off the cart and broke apart. I still have the pieces of the broken bot, though I don't know why!
    Annie in Austin said...
    Your colocasia looks great in the photo, anyway, Anthony. I've grown them once or twice but a windstorm always seemed to hit the plant right when the 'ears' had finally expanded to full size. Finding shade with no wind is not easy!

    Annie at the Transplantable Rose

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