My oldest (12) grandson mentioned that my potatoes had little things on them. I told him those are called the eyes and they are buds that will grow into plants and the potato will turn back into several new potato plants and grow potatoes again. It's how to propagate potatoes. I told him, in the spring people use cut pieces of potatoes that have the eyes in them to plant for fall potatoes. Each plant then will grow a root system and in that will grow many tubers that will eventually be potatoes.

He thought that was really cool so I said we could start the plants now by putting the potato in water by suspending the potato over a glass and then when the roots fill out we can plant it in a pot. When it warms up we'll transplant this to a much bigger pot and put it outside. Then when they are ready we'll spill out the plant, dirt and potatoes and harvest them for eating. He wanted to do that.

We started this Dec 15th. I wish I would have taken a pic of the root system before we planted it a couple weeks ago. All three boys (12, 9 and 6) have been watching this like a hawk for new sprouts. It's been a great science experiment. I try t do something sciency with them every time they come over. In fact last time oldest was here he complained he didn't like his science class much because his teacher was all about book learning and tests and no fun with real experiments. Which made me sad for him but happy he loves my teaching method. The really sad thing is so many kids will be turned off of science by one crappy teacher.