Well, it is really the rainy season now here in the Philippines but we've been having some sunny days lately for the past week or so and this encouraged me to do some planting in our small backyard garden. My sister bought some taro plants in the market. These are the big one that are ready for cooking and they do not sell any smaller plants that are ready for planting. What we do to get our planting material is to cut off the leaves and the stalks and leave only about 3 inches of the stalk at the base. Then from the 3 inches of stalk that is attached to the tuber, we go down 2 inches then cut off the bottom end. What is now left is what will be used for planting material, a 3 inches of stalk with 2 inches of tuber attached. The rest of the plant goes into the pot for cooking.
We do not sow the planting materials right away. We first dry them out in the sun for at least two days to make the cut portion dry so the worms will not eat them. After two days of drying under the sun, I sowed the plant materials in a prepared plot which is a mixture of soil and composted rice hull that I removed from the chicken coop. Many people here in the Philippines plant Taro in wet land but since I do not have that, so I will have to make do with what I have and plant them in dry land. Having the rice hull mixed in with the soil will make the rain water to drain faster but I figured that with the rainy days being here, it should help the plant to take root faster. We planted some beans and Pechay in this same plot the last time but now I am practicing a crop rotation so I am sowing taro plants in this bed this time.
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