I grew taro this year pretty much by accident.
Here’s how it happened. This spring I gave a talk on root vegetables to a lovely group of seniors. For this talk, I like to buy a bunch of widely assorted root vegetables to hand around as props (my audience was especially impressed by the scary long burdock roots). And then I cook them at home afterwards. But this time I got a little carried away at various supermarkets and bought more than I could prepare before they went bad. I decided to try to sprout the couple of taro corms. It was too early to plant them outdoors, so I put them in pots and kept them watered. Weeks later, no growth – oh well, into the compost they go.
You guessed it. When the weather warmed and I was stirring up my compost pile, there were two little taro plants growing out of what I’d tried to throw away.