An excavation of sorts

Although it's still quite summery here in St. Louis, I can't repeat my mistakes of previous years and keep all of my non-hardy plant overwintering tasks until the last possible moment. So I started yesterday by doing some excavation in a large pot.

Not much to see yet, although I've already taken out 6" (15cm) of soil. The scoop is no longer useful, as the rest of the work requires a gentle touch and therefore fingers alone.

***

A little more revealed:

Anybody know what this is yet?

With even more uncovered, you may recognize these as Amorphophalus konjac corms.

Here's a reminder of what this pot looked like a couple of months back:

These are quite large corms:

With plenty of smaller offsets, which have formed on the ends of long fleshy stalks (like some Colocasias do):

Since I'm reusing this potting mix, I have to look out for the smallest of the baby corms...

...as I've already had these plants popping up in a few unexpected places -- hey that container of Opuntia now has a little umbrella of foliage!

Since Amorphophallus konjac is supposedly hardy to zone 6, I'm going to plant one of these out in the yard and see how it overwinters. I expect it to do fine, but where to put it exactly?

Maybe I'll plant more than one since I have quite a few now...


I wish my underground food harvests -- garlic, potatoes -- were this successful!

.