This is my first year for elephant ears as well. I have two, one in the pond and the other in a pot. The one in the pot is doing much better than the one in the pond, but I am not sure why. I understand that elephant ears need lots of fertilizer and water. We used a triple mix in the pots as well as garden soil and it really seems to like it. I fertilized it with a slow release granular mix. In the same pot I have a couple of heucheras, two coleus and a sedum. Sounds like an odd mix but everyone is happy. The elephant ear in the pond is planted in clay mixed with garden soil. We used a special fertilizer below the roots. I was told that the roots had not reached the fertilizer yet and when it does, it will take off.
My guess for your elephant ear is to fertilize it well and make sure it gets lots of water. Mine is on the south side of the house so it gets full midday sun. I hope this helps.

Danni

Hello,

Sorry for the post above. This forum is a little hard to edit or adjust.

I forgot to write the size of the container...which is 17 by 17. And as for the pics...I'm going to try again and hopefully this will work...if it doesnt, please let me know what I'm doing wrong. Thanks and here are the pics:

Here are some photo's:

{{gwi:47500}}

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Then the New ones:

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Here is the 30 by 22 leaf:
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Have you checked the roots?? Perhaps they are getting root bound in those pots.
Kathi

Your pot is about the same size as mine, I can't remember off hand if it's a 16 or 18" pot. Anyway, the yellowing and falling off of older ears is normal.

To get it to grow more lush might not be possible. This is my first year growing EE as well and I have noticed the bulbs in the store range from golf ball size to softball size.

The one I am growing was softball sized and has about 7-8 healthy leaves at any given time, but I suspect that a smaller bulb may not be able to produce the same amount of foliage. I am guessing here though.

Plenty of water and fertilizer and full sun and that's all you can do. Your plant looks healthy to me though.

Hello,

Thanks so far for the help. From what I can tell the roots are fine. I searched on this forum and found a similar posting, where a person was growing EE in a 16inch pot and they grew very well and full.

So, I'm not sure on why this might be happening. Also does anyone know if its ok to transplant into a bigger pot during summer?

Thanks
Jo

I would transfer to a larger pot, just put it out of the full sun for a few days. If the pot is not completely full of roots I will be surprised. Our club grew five in 5 gallon pots for our fair display this year. Grown in a greenhouse they were so large they looked like banana. They were Alocasia and eight feet tall. After two weeks inside a metal fair building with very little light they still looked great. Within the first hour of the after fair plant sale we sold them all for $50 each and could have sold 5 more. I grow some every year but they never get over 5 feet grown in the garden. Al

This was mine in 2004.
{{gwi:47507}}

It was in a 16" pot the entire season. In this location it received about 2-3 hours of sun in the late afternoon.
They grew just under 6 feet tall and had a "wing span" (LOL) of about 5 feet.
The largest leaf it produced was a tad shorter than 4 feet long.
Very impressive.
As for the roots... Here's how mine looked after it was unpotted- LOTS of roots!
{{gwi:47508}}

Over the winter I stored it in a basin (dirt/root ball & all) in my my mother's basement.
I repotted it (same pot) and put it in the yard in a different spot.I wasn't sure if it would be OK - or if it would be too sunny. It received over 7 hours of direct sun.
I guess it didn't care.
{{gwi:47509}}

It's normal for the leaves to yellow & die back.
Just cut it off.

Hello,

Ok...so from what it seems we are not doing anything really wrong, so then why are they not filling out? I know I shouldnt really complain, with the leafs being as big as 30inches long but I would like to know if there might be a reason why there are only 3 to 4 leafs in each pot.

Thanks again for all the help.

Jo

How large was the bulb you planted? Golf ball, baseball or softball?

Outofspite was the basin you kept yours in dry? And did overwintering it give you a big headstart? Thanks. filix

Yes, filix. It was dry. It was one of those plastic dishwashing basins.
the soil dried out naturally.
In the spring I discovered new shoots popping out.

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.

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Great pics danscaper! This was my first year growing them. I planted one softball size bulb in a large container. It did well. It's still alive and kicking in my unheated garage. Was it worth overwintering it? Did you start with a bulb like mine? And did it get much bigger the second year? Looks like it did. I would like to try one in the ground next year. I also have two black magic EE's I'm over wintering up stairs in a sunny window. I will do them in a large container. Hope they get big. filix

The plant pictured in my last post started with about a baseball-sized bulb/corm last year and went pretty crazy once the weather turned hot. By the end of the growing season last year it was about 4 feet tall and the base of the plant was a good foot and a half across, which was amazing to me when you consider it had only started out baseball-sized a couple months earlier. It had clearly added some below-ground growth.

Last fall, I dug a 'root ball' that fit into about a 15 gallon nursery pot and carried that to our dark, very cool basement and cared for/eventually ignored it as in my previous post.

In the late spring this year I took that entire dry root ball, dug a pretty large hole and supplemented it with some very good soil and fertilizer around the root ball and watered it like crazy for a few days. Then, once the weather got hot again this year, it took off and probably doubled in size from last year (7 feet tall with 3 foot base of growth) so I'd say the overwintering was well worth the back-breaking haul down into the basement. I did have to water pretty frequently because it was very dry here this year and I also heavily fertilized it almost weekly.

I ended up not digging them up today but will tomorrow. I believe the root ball is going to be huge. It can clearly be divided at this point but I have so many other smaller EE's that I want to keep pushing this one to see if I can grow it beyond enormous next year.

Unfortunately, we don't have any sunny windows for me to try and overwinter the Black Magics so I have to do as best I can with the dark, cool basement. Of course, there would be no room for 40 plants no matter how many windows we had.

On a side note, there is a golf course near us that has a large, yellow-ish EE that has been there for about 15 years now. They NEVER dig it up. It stays outside all winter long and has been going strong now for a decade and a half. I'd love to avoid the hassle of digging mine up but I hate to take the chance with it outside even though theirs has done very well.

Thats for the info. Well then I will bring that big rootball down my dark old basement. That one at the golf course wow z5? I wonder if they do anything speacial to it? Thanks. filix

I think the lady at the golf course told me they do nothing special to protect it. It's been a few years since I asked her about it. Maybe they throw some mulch or leaves over it for added insulation but it sounds like they pretty much neglect it. It could have something to do with its maturity as well. Maybe it has such a hearty corm and root structure that it can stave off the cold.

The other thing is it's in a very hilly area and the golf course lies in a valley just at the base of some large hills. It's sort of protected so it's possible that there is a microclimate that's a bit less drastic than some of the normal northern Ohio winter weather.

I LOVE this plant. Wish I would plant them but alas my balcony garden is only 8'4" square.

Jo, I'm not sure where you live but danscaper is in Ohio. They have very hot and muggy summers, perfect conditions for a fast developing Elephant Ear plant.

In my cool summers, my EE's are very slow to start growing and it seems like they really start to fill out just in time for me to have to store them for winter protection.

I still love em' and love to grow em'.