the taro plantnow 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 seehow to grow the taro plant how to fertilize ithow to harvest it and by the end of this episode...you will be on your way to growing great taro in your gardentaro are of two types taro are of two types one is the ornamental variety...they cannot be eaten
the other variety of tarohas green stems and are edible the corms, tubers or the roots which growunderground are edibleand the leaves are edible as well in today's episode we will talk about theedible taro variety the taro plant is mostly eaten for its rootsits roots have a nice nutty flavor the roots are actually the corms or the tuberswhich 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 cookedbefore eating the taro plant grows best in the groundgrowing in the ground gives the plant a lot
of spaceto expand their tubers and growing in containers is not a good ideathey do not grow well in containers now as far as soil goes...the taro plant needs soil that is well-draining but it loves moistureso 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 growingthem in containers you're going to get a lot of leaves but thefruit 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 monthsyou can add extra potassium by mixing in a fertilizer like green sandnow green sand is an organic fertilizer, rich in potassiumthere are other sources of potassium as well but i recommend using green sandit is a very effective organic fertilizer to increase potassium content in your soilthe best way to propagate the taro plant is by getting roots from a grocer storeyou can easily grow taro root plant with the roots that you get from the grocery storehowever, once your plants are established
you're going to see a lot of off-shoots comingout of the plant there you can see it, this plant has a lotof off-shoots each of these can be grown into a separatetaro plant now this plant was grown in a containerand as you can see, it has a lot of off-shoots and a lot of leaves, but hardly any rootsthat's why you should always grow taro in the groundtaro roots usually take about 3-4 months to grow and produce the tubersso if you plant in spring, you can harvest in late summerif you are planting in the summer, you can harvest in the falland all the way thru the early winter
so to harvest taro root, you can either usea spade or a fork both work equally welland just pull the plant out like that now look at the tubers..those are pretty welldeveloped and this plant is very much ready for harvestand that's how your plant looks like when it's ready for harvestthose are some nice tubers so let's look at a couple of plants that wereharvested so what we're going to do is...use these tubers, take them out and then we're going to discard the topswe don't need them now so we're going to harvest these tubers andwash them
so that's how it looks likeso its another day of harvest and today we're going to use a garden forkto 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 somenice corms or roots that you can harvest so to harvest with a garden fork, we use thesame 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 outthe plant just pull it outthen just shake the soil around the plants
so you can see the tubersnow as you start going thru the plant roots...you're going to see a lot of tubers attachedjust like that it's a pretty big sized tuber right thereso we have a few more plants to harvest so let's get going and harvest the other plantsnow and keep collecting the taro root corms orthe tubers as we harvest so there we have itthat's our harvest those are the tubers that are most ediblepart of the plant now as i mentioned before the lease are alsoedible but in this case that's going straight tomy compost bin
but you can actually cook the leaves, theytaste pretty good so we've washed the taro roots and put iton a paper towel for drying once you leave it outside for about a dayor so in a well ventilated area, it should cure and store for weeksso there we have it... taro is easy to growthe roots have a nice nutty flavor and i'm sure once you try it out...you will enjoy the experience if you are not a subscriber yetplease do subscribe to our channel and if you liked this videodo leave your comments and suggestions and i'll see you again soon on california gardening