GROWING TARO ROOT PLANT TIPS
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
kero 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 calms or 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 calms or the
tubers which grow underground and they
have really nice taste
no part of the taro plant must be eaten
draw 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're
watering your taro plant almost on a
daily basis
here are some taro roots growing in
containers and as I mentioned I did not
recommend growing them in containers you
got to get a lot of leaves but the fruit
production of the tipo 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
to 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's 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 grocery 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
offshoots coming out of the plant there
you can see it these this plant has a
lot of offshoots 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 offshoots
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 to 4 months to grow and produce
the tubers so if you plant in spring you
can harvest in late summer or if you're
planting in the summer you can harvest
and the fall and all the way through the
early winter
so to harvest arrowroot you can either
use a spade or a fork both work equally
well and just pull the plant out like
that now look at those tubers those are
pretty well-developed and this plant is
very 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
plums 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 it's another day of harvest and today
we are going to use a garden fork to
harvest let's see how that goes so it
takes about three to four months for a
taro plant to grow well establish itself
and form some nice calms or roots that
you can harvest so to harvest with the
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 and then
just shake the soil around the plants so
you can see the tubers now as you start
going through 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 combs or tubers as we harvest
so there we have it that's our harvest
those are the tubers that are the most
edible part of the plant now as I
mentioned before the leaves are also
edible but in this case that's going
straight to my compost bin but you can
actually cook the leaves they put 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 then store for weeks so there we
have it
Derro 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
