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Growing and cooking taro by Ray Grogan
How to grow dryland taro

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People will ride for miles to check out your unusual garden.  (Don “Arnie” Arnold and his new Harley.)
 
 
 
 
 

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This is the same garden, with virtually no care all summer. (In the past I’d come back to weeds a foot high.) The carpet trick worked well on the tomatoes, too. Besides carpet, there are pieces of thin plywood, a few pieces of tile, etc.
 
 

 
 
 
Taro grows just fine in a garden like any other plant. In fact, it is one of the easiest to grow. No bugs attack it, and I’ve never had any disease problems. It loves water, of course, but can take a fair amount of drought.
 
 

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Here is a spring garden in Iowa. A few tricks:

 

The plants are fairly good sized. Taro would like to have a 6 month season, and will get bigger if you start bigger.

 

Carpet mulch. (I was going to leave for 2 months, and Mary “doesn’t do weeds”.)

 

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On to indoor taro