I bought some organic potatoes the other day and they started to sprout. Michael, the cook in our family, was a bit put out by this, but I thought it was kind of cool. He suggested that I plant one with Kate so that she could watch it grow. He even helpfully found these directions as he knows that I have a bit of a black thumb. No really, I kill every plant I touch. But I figured, how hard can it be? It’s already sprouting.
First I gathered our supplies: potato, skewers, cup, water, scissors.
Then I cut the skewers down to size. I know the directions called for toothpicks, but we like to improvise here. Also, I have no toothpicks. Kate was fascinated with the skewers.
Then I let Kate explore the potato. Hey, it’s her science experiment, right? I cut it short when she started trying to eat the raw potato. A picky eater she is not. 🙂
Then I stuck in the skewers. I decided to go with a nice star pattern. (I sound like such a snob here. I’m really not. I am, however, a bit neurotic and OCD. )
I decided to let Kate pour the water since she’s obsessed with pouring water. Plus, I wanted her to feel like she was involved. She loved it and would have happily poured the water back and forth for an hour if I had let her. Then she got to help set the potato in the water.
Seems easy enough, right? Wrong! The black thumb strikes again. We did this weeks ago, but our potato never sprouted. It just dissolved. There were trails of potato snot in the water. I thought about changing the water, but Michael suggested that maybe the potato knew what it was doing and it needed the starch. We waited and waited and waited until tonight we finally threw it away. Maybe we’ll try again with a different type of potato because Kate thought that it was pretty cool to check on our potato every day, but she (and I) lost interest when nothing every happened. Has anyone successfully done this? Care to share any tips?