If you want to add a tropical flavor to your garden this year, next time you're at the grocery store look for for taro or malanga. Both are tropical starchy root vegetables (although technically, they're probably tubers or rhizomes) that can be cooked like potatoes--they make great fritters--but you can also plant them and grow some beautiful elephant ears for your garden. I've had pretty good luck the last few years growing taro, which produced the familiar big green-leafed Colocasia esculenta, and malanga from the Latin grocery stores in my neighborhood, which turned out to be a Xanthosoma species.

Look for firm, undamaged tubers without any soft spots, and with a pink growing tip at one end if you can. Just pot up the tubers in your favorite potting or container mix with the tips just protruding from the soil, give them a good watering and then keep them warm and moist until they start to sprout. Then you can give them more water and as much light as you possibly can until it's warm enough to plant them outdoors. Once outdoors, they require lots of sun, lots of water, and do best with plenty of fertilizer. They grow incredibly fast and are very gratifying and fun to grow. They make good container plants but even in the largest containers they require such frequent watering during the summer that I've had better luck planting them directly in the ground.

Two caveats: the first is that I've found that they can be slow to sprout. I'm not sure if this is because they are treated with a growth inhibitor but they can take several weeks to put out new growth, so now is the time to plant them indoors so they'll be ready when the weather warms up in late April or early May. The more heat you can give them, the better. The second caveat is that some of the tubers either rot or just refuse to sprout at all, again possibly because of growth inhibitors, so I generally buy a few more than I need. At something like $1.49 a pound, it's still a pretty cheap way to get a giant tropical plant for your garden!

Having grown both I prefer the Xanthosoma, mainly because they require a bit less water than the Colocasia and don't get crispy edges if you forget to water them for a day or two! On the other hand, Colocasia grow much faster so if you want instant results, that's the one to try. Here are some photos of the grocery store Xanthosoma I grew last year:

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