Growing Taro Root is easy this vegetable loaded with fiber is not only healthy
but also very delicious we will look at a Taro Root recipe as well in today's
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episode now I've just emptied one of my containers and as you can see here I'm adding
some extra compost to do whatever came out of the container so it is ok to recycle
some of your containers soil as long as you don't have extensive root mass
inside it, as you can see here and then add some kind of amendments in this case I'm
adding compost but I also sometimes things like perlite or vermiculite
or even more manure to improve the composition of the soil that we're using
so in case of Taro Root, we are growing them in this whiskey barrel container which is
quite large and should accommodate up to three plants now taro root loves
soil that's a little compact and can also survive and soil that is very
wet so if you do not have a lot of drainage in the soil that's ok they
taro root has roots that can breathe through even water for example in Hawaii
where taro root is grown very commonly the plants are actually planted an almost
stagnant water and it still grows pretty well as you can see here we did provide
some kind of drainage to our soil by adding some perlite as you can see the
white particles in the soil and then we planted two plants and then we're now ready
to plant our third plant now you can adjust the spacing around your plant but
I would suggest is a spacing them just about like in a triangle so if you have 3
plants that's the best way to go about it you can just shuffle plants around
to make sure that you get the best positioning for your plants and Taro Root being a
tropical plant loves warm weather so we planted ours in May and in June you can
see that all these three Taro Root varieties by the way you can clearly see
the difference in all the varieties, one has purple stems, one has green stems and
the third one has green stems with a slight purple tinge and all of these are very
much a edible, they all grew very similar the only thing might be subtle
differences in taste and that's what I wanted to find out by growing all these
different varieties and I realized that they don't really differ a lot and taste
you can see here by August the plant has gone pretty tall and out potting mix has a
lot of compost you can also see some little weeds here
and if you have homemade compost
you can expect some weeds in it, that's perfectly fine and we're gonna
give it a few months for the Taro Root to develop strong tubers and in
October we will finally start harvesting our Taro roots and as you can see here very
nicely formed roots, this is a perfect time to harvest the Taro root
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and taro root is a nuttier tasting vegetable compared to something like let's say like potato so if you do not
like potatoes are your kids do not like potatoes Taro Root is a good option it tastes
a little nuttier, its denser it also has a lot of fiber and we enjoy eating Taro Root a lot
now in the state of Hawaii is known as Kalo, I hope that I got the
pronunciation right its called Kalo and it's used to make something called Poi, which
is a popular dish in Hawaii
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Now the Taro plant can grow in full sun or even in partial shade
now partial shade usually means about four hours of Sun anything more
anything more than 8 hours is full sun
so this plant goes very well even in partial shade
and as you can see here the harvest
we're getting some really nice sized taro roots
and not only the roots but also the leaves of this plant are edible the
however its to root that takes the crown when it comes to the taste and
cooking a lot of recipes it's usually the root that's used
as you can see here harvesting a lot of taro roots from just this small container
now if you grow this in the ground you might be able to harvest a little more
growing this in a container just makes it a lot easier
you use less space
and...
you get a lot of leaves as well as roots using this method
and as you can see here the taro plant grows pretty dense root system
as you can see here
we're still harvesting the tubers that are attached to the sides of the plant
some of them can even be re-grown
and as you can see here the root mass is pretty large
and I would you can also do is once you harvest this main plant you
can actually replant the main plan for the next growing season and it
should produce some more taro root now I did try out this method and it works
really well all you do is just take the plan and then just planted it again however
you also need warm temperatures so if you're in an area that has warmer
temperatures even in the next growing season you should be ok so places like
zone 10 in southern California
you should be ok but does if you have cooler weather taro root
or the taro plan doesn't grow very well in cooler weather so you need to make note of that
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and here is a Taro root recipe
so that's all we have in today's episode if you want to know more about the taro plant
you can watch these two videos
the video on your left will give you some tips on growing the plant
as well as a harvest
and the video on the right
will show you some of the differences of growing this plant in containers vs raised beds
we'll see you again soon
happy gardening