Fun with Taro Plants
I'm going to do an honest to goodness fish pond this year. So while I am waiting for it to quit raining long enough to pour concrete and lay blocks and all that good stuff, I've been cycling filter media, swiping below water plants from my fishtanks and quarentining the new fish that are going in with my two year old goldies.
After deciding on water hyacinth as my primary floating plant (pretty flowers, fast replicating, makes good chicken feed and green manure) I waffled on what else to have.
I finally settled on taro plants and water chestnuts.
Last night we went up to the local pan-Asian market after dinner. Plenty of taro roots but no water chestnuts. (Fortunately, eBay is providing on that front.)
Today, I took advantage of a break in the rain to pick up a bag of potting soil and round up a trio of cat litter buckets, and so began my experiment.
Into each bucket went potting soil. Then the tuber was set 4"down and leaf side up. And then I filled them with water until they were saturated. (You're supposed to put gravel or pebbles on top of the soil to hold it in place and deter mosquitos, but until we get through the cold snap, I've got them indoors under lights.
And that's it. The leaves and tubers when cooked are both edible. (All the plant parts can be irritating when raw.) Harvest of the tubers will be sometime this fall.
If they sprout and grow then I get a big, leafy plant for my pond. Yay!
After deciding on water hyacinth as my primary floating plant (pretty flowers, fast replicating, makes good chicken feed and green manure) I waffled on what else to have.
I finally settled on taro plants and water chestnuts.
Last night we went up to the local pan-Asian market after dinner. Plenty of taro roots but no water chestnuts. (Fortunately, eBay is providing on that front.)
Today, I took advantage of a break in the rain to pick up a bag of potting soil and round up a trio of cat litter buckets, and so began my experiment.
Into each bucket went potting soil. Then the tuber was set 4"down and leaf side up. And then I filled them with water until they were saturated. (You're supposed to put gravel or pebbles on top of the soil to hold it in place and deter mosquitos, but until we get through the cold snap, I've got them indoors under lights.
And that's it. The leaves and tubers when cooked are both edible. (All the plant parts can be irritating when raw.) Harvest of the tubers will be sometime this fall.
If they sprout and grow then I get a big, leafy plant for my pond. Yay!