vanspragg

I'm in nw Ohio and my typical routine for my elephant ears is thus:

1. Leave in the ground until the first heavy frost. Heavy enough to pretty much knock the leaves down.

2. Dig up the plants and knock off as much dirt as possible and let them sit in the garage on newspaper for week. My theory here is that some of the nutrients and water from the leaves will absorb into the bulb. Whether that happens or not I don't know, but I don't usually lose many if any, so if ain't broke, don't fix it!

3. After setting in the garage a week I take a sharp knife and cut of the leaves 3 or 4 inches above the bulb. Closer if a small bulb. I knock off any remaining dirt and trim the roots with scissors. It's probably best to error on the longer side, but I cut them down to a couple inches. Again, it works so I don't change it. However, longer roots probably translates into faster growth in the spring. I typically remove the babies from the mother plant at this time too.

4. Seal the bulbs in 1 gallon ziplock baggies with dry sphagnum peat moss. The peat moss absorbs any moisture yet keeps the bulb from becoming overly dry. Peat moss supposedly has some antiseptic properties that helps with rotting also. For bulbs too large for baggies, I use garbage bags and time them shut.

5. Place in a cool, dark place. I use boxes in my garage. It usually gets a little warm in the garage before our last frost date, but the bulbs seem to fair well. A crawl or an unconditioned basement would probably be best. Check the bulbs occasionally, maybe 2 or 3 times over the winter. If you see bad ones, take them out of baggy so they don't cause the others to rot. My black magic (colocasia esculenta) tend to stay a little too dry and I have sprinkled a little water in the bag over the winter.

By using this method, you are definitely going to have to start from bulb every spring, but after a couple years, the bulbs get so big is doesn't take them long to fill out in the spring.