The Taro Plant Now some of you might be wondering
What is Taro? Should I grow it?
I've probably seen it at the grocery store! How does it taste?
In today's video we will see How to grow the Taro plant
How to fertilize it How to harvest it
And by the end of this episode... you will be on your way to growing
great Taro in your garden Taro are of two types
Taro are of two types
One is the ornamental variety ...they cannot be eaten
The other variety of Taro has green stems and are Edible
The corms, tubers or the roots which grow underground
are edible And the leaves are edible as well
In today's episode we will talk about the edible Taro variety
The Taro plant is mostly eaten for its roots Its roots have a nice nutty flavor
The roots are actually the corms or the tubers which grow underground and they have a really nice taste
No part of the Taro plant must be eaten raw.
The leaves as well as the roots must be cooked before eating
The Taro plant grows best in the ground Growing in the ground gives the plant a lot
of space to expand their tubers
And growing in containers is not a good idea They do not grow well in containers
Now as far as soil goes... The Taro plant needs soil
that is well-draining but it loves moisture So make sure you are watering your Taro plant
almost on a daily basis
Here are some Taro plants growing in containers
And as I mentioned, I do not recommend growing them in containers
You're going to get a lot of leaves but the fruit production
Or tuber production is very less
Taro requires a well balanced fertilizer to start with
And as you go into the late season
usually in about 2-3 months You can add extra potassium by mixing in a
fertilizer like Green Sand Now Green sand is an organic fertilizer, rich
in Potassium There are other sources of Potassium as well
But I recommend using Green sand It is a very effective organic fertilizer
to increase potassium content in your soil The best way to propagate the Taro plant is
by getting roots from a grocer store You can easily grow Taro Root plant with the
roots that you get from the grocery store However, once your plants are established
You're going to see a lot of off-shoots coming out of the plant
There you can see it, this plant has a lot of off-shoots
Each of these can be grown into a separate Taro plant
Now this plant was grown in a container And as you can see, it has a lot of off-shoots
and a lot of leaves, but hardly any roots That's why you should always grow Taro in
the ground Taro Roots usually take about 3-4 months to
grow and produce the tubers So if you plant in Spring, you can harvest
in late summer If you are planting in the summer, you can
harvest in the fall And all the way thru the early winter
So to harvest Taro Root, you can either use a Spade or a Fork
Both work equally well And just pull the plant out like that
Now look at the tubers..those are pretty well developed
And this plant is very much ready for harvest And that's how your plant looks like
When it's ready for harvest Those are some nice tubers
So let's look at a couple of plants that were harvested
So what we're going to do is... Use these tubers, take them out
And then we're going to discard the tops We don't need them now
So we're going to harvest these tubers and wash them
So that's how it looks like So its another day of harvest
And today we're going to use a Garden Fork to harvest
Let's see how that goes... So it takes about 3-4 months for a Taro plant
to grow well, establish itself and form some nice corms or roots that you can harvest
So to harvest with a Garden Fork, we use the same technique...
And we try to push the plant out... Making sure we don't damage the tubers
And depending on how big the plant is... you might have to dig in a little deeper
And once you feel you can easily pull out the plant
Just pull it out Then just shake the soil around the plants
So you can see the tubers Now as you start going thru the plant roots...you're
going to see a lot of tubers attached Just like that
It's a pretty big sized tuber right there So we have a few more plants to harvest
So let's get going and harvest the other plants now
And keep collecting the Taro root corms or the tubers as we harvest
So there we have it That's our harvest
Those are the tubers that are most edible part of the plant
Now as I mentioned before the lease are also edible
But in this case that's going straight to my compost bin
But you can actually cook the leaves, they taste pretty good
So we've washed the Taro Roots and put it on a Paper towel for drying
Once you leave it outside for about a day or so in a well ventilated area, it should
cure and store for weeks So there we have it...
Taro is easy to grow The roots have a nice nutty flavor
And I'm sure once you try it out... You will enjoy the experience
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