The Compost Bin: overwinter

Showing posts with label overwinter. Show all posts

Overwintering Colocasia Gigantea
2/01/2007

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.