Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Newbie questions on EE's, 1 by taj12

taj12 wrote:
I bought a couple of EE's this spring from a big box store, I was not even sure about how to plant them til I received help from this forum. I planted one each in the largest pots I have. Quickly found out they needed water every day, and late in season figured out they looked better and grew better with a little liquid fertilizer every other week or so.

Now I am in zone 6 and I had cut plants off and moved pots into my garage before killing freeze. Due to my job and such I let them set for a couple of weeks til today. I carried pots outside and dumped them out. I have am used to storing bulbs and roots for winter storage,but have never raised EE's. I was pulling roots from the soil trying to get to the big bulb I had planted in spring. I found that where all the stems had came up there was a small bulb growing. I ended up pulling on leaf stems and pulled the baby from the original bulb. Then when I was working on the other pot something had eaten part of the "mother" bulb and it had babies around it also. these babies pretty much fell away from the "mother" bulb.

My questions are
1.Will these smaller baby bulbs be okay by them self or do they have to be a certain size to be on thier own? I found a couple that are about the size of a golf ball.
2. What is the best way to store them for winter?
3. Will the mother bulb that has been eaten on be any account or is it done for?

thanks.

taj

ps. Here is a picture of my EE's