Auntjen,

My Elephant Ears were also considerably smaller this year than the past two, (though I wouldn't say they looked awful). About a month ago I sprinkled a liberal amount of time-release fertilizer pellets around them and the newer leaves have begun to show signs of their former glory. I would imagine that their rapid rate of lush growth requires heavy feeding...

Mike

I agree with Mike. Their rapid growth requires a fertile soil so if they suck up all the nutients in their little area they get pretty mopey. Same thing happened with mine.

Not to mention that most plants just love natural rain...which we have had much less of this year. It makes a huge difference!

Sounds like you need to feed them. They really do well with a regular feeding of organic nutrients and the cheapest, easiest way is cow manure. You can pick up a 40lb bag at Wallymart or Home Depot and it will last you a while. Every year, early in the season when mine start coming up I try to work a bag into the soil where they are planted. Then whenever I water them, the nitrogen in the manure is released. Since mine are so big, that only works for the first part of the summer before they deplete that and I either add more to the soil or give them manure tea. It's easy to make and they really thrive. Take a 5 gallon bucket fill it with water. Take a good size shovel full of manure and put it in a old pillowcase. Let it steep a few hours (just like making tea) and remove the pillow case. Get an old pitcher and dip it out. Pour it at the base of the plants. The blacker the water, the better and I have even forgot and let it steep overnight. You can add more water to whatever you have left over in the pillowcase and use it again. You should see growth improve within days. :)

Yep, fertilizer. I try to hit them with MiracleGro every few weeks - they love it!

This happened to me one year and I dug some up to see what was going on. Turned out that voles, (field mice) had been nibbling on the corms all winter. (they are a good source in asian countries) From now on either dig them up or plant in cages you can make from hardware cloth. I acutally lost 200 from the voles. Hard lesson!

I spray all of mine with fish emulsion every other week in the spring and then back off later in the summer. Then I do a last few feedings starting in September when we get a couple more months of good growth (zone 8SC).