Elephant ear plant vs squash

If you'd like the the jungle-like appearance of tropical elephant ear plants with the vegetable advantage of squash, allow me to recommend a zucchini plant to satisfy your large leaf garden desire.

Elephant ear plants are in the family of caladiums. Their bulbs are large as potatoes, and the bulbs for jumbo plants are larger than that. They do well in shade and tend to burn in direct afternoon sun, although the plants that I've owned lean outward from the shade toward the sun and then burn to a crinkly crisp. I've been thinking of ways to protect them from their suicidal impulse with shade such as patio umbrella that gets lifted in afternoons, or shoji screens, but those would be too easily blown down, plus they conceal ant that wrecks the whole fun. The wind gets a bit high, but then, that affects umbrellas as well. For now I'll just live with them aiming outward.

Mine haven't grown this fully. Where I live only four or five leaves grow at a time then the season ends. The foliage is prickly. Your bare arm becomes itchy after it brushes against them. 

The first year before I learned about elephant ears and caladiums I grew a single zucchini in a large pot. Possibly as many as three. I forget. The pot of zucchini plants completely dominated the corner of the terrace with very large foliage that reached through the railing and flowered attractively and at summer's end grew small zucchinis, just the way I like them. They're hard to pick when you've watched them with fascination grow to completion, but I did, and they were delicious. They're full sun plants. I'm not sure every plant will do this well if you keep it down to just one or two plants. As you know, gardeners plant several, they take over the whole place and tend to overproduce. In my experience, keeping it minimal was a lot of fun and worked for purpose of decoration and fun of watching it grow so spectacularly.

Imagine this pot planted with additional nursery plants with different growing habits, different foliage, different characteristics and color, plants that pile up in the center, plants that drape over and hang from the the pot and tall plants that shoot up above it. Just stuff the pot unreasonably to maximize available space. Purple petunias, for example, contrast wonderfully with dark green foliage and large dark yellow flowers. Zucchini plants have a lot of space between stems and leaves that can be taken advantage of with variety. Colorful caladium leaves could fill in the spaces and grove above, putting colorful heart shapes over the zucchini foliage.

Today I'm cooking a spaghetti squash for the first time ever. They come with a lot of seeds. I know from growing the zucchini one time that this type of seed germinates quickly and the plants take off with a running start. They're satisfying to watch. It appears from browser images that the spaghetti squash plants are lower to the ground and tend to creep over the ground. Some pictures show the plant growing into a low airy bush. 

They seem more like vines. One site advises to grow them vertically for much greater yield.

Who would want a yield like that? A family of 20, I suppose. Still, it looks fun. Imagine those hanging over the balcony 5 floors up. There is a greenhouse type extension, a glass blister, below on the first level. My cherry tomatoes did go bouncing off, but a 3 lb. squash could do some real damage. Of course they'd all be growing on the outside of the railing on the sun drenched side. Just cutting them off would be tricky. Imagine a person on the other side of this trellis harvesting five floors up with glass extension below. 

In the first photo, notice the dark purple bunch in the background. Those are oxalis triangularis. I grew those too the last three years. This year I bought 40 bullet-like bulbs. The time to plant them is now.