Originally Posted by raygrogan

I can give you how they bury taro in Japan, in warmer climate, and can tell you what did not work for me in zone 5.

The taro variety is called satoimo (aka dasheen, eddo, Colocasia esculenta var antiquorum L). It is grown for the little side cormlets, which have less "itch" than regular Hawaiian taro. It can be cooked in stir-fry. It is more temperate than taro, and needs a few "chill hours" each winter to be ready to take off in the spring. So a little different from your tropical bananas.

I have two friends who have told me how people overwinter it in Japan, near Tokyo and Nagoya.

The first said they separate the cormlets in the fall and bury the individual "potatoes": "Farmers keep some of the harvested potatoes, and bury them 50 cm (1.5 ft) below ground, IMMEDIATELY after the harvest. (You don’t even dry them.) In the spring, you dig them up. When you plant it, you plant it 20 cm (0.6 feet) below grade."

The second sent me pictures and labels. Their technique was to bury the whole clump, (I think without digging it up), in the late fall. The pix clearly show a bunch of dried plants (stalks, like maybe cattails, onion flowers, etc.) then a wee bit of dirt, then a sheet of plastic with more dirt on top of that.

My failure was sorta like the first one - except here in zone 5 I went down about 3 feet trying to beat the cold. In the spring it was a soggy rotten mess. I have not tried the second method. But I think it would work better, to both not disturb it in the fall, and to keep it relatively dry vs down in a well. It might take a bale of hay to give it enough insulation, and maybe 2 layers of plastic with something inbetween. And be on a hill with good drainage. Good luck.