Stupid Vegetable Tricks - A Potato

Here’s a way to teach a potato to do a stupid vegetable trick.  This is a great craft or activity to include when including a child in a gardening project, studying botany, or the life sciences.

SUPPLIES:

Scissors
Shoes box or other small box with a top
Cardboard or paper
Tape
Small flowerpot
Soil
Sprouted potato
Tap water

DIRECTIONS:

1. Cut a small hole in one end of the shoe box.
2. Cut to or three pieces of cardboard that are at least one inch shorter that the width of the box.
3. Use these pieces to cardboard to make partitions in the box.  Put them in like a simple maze and attach them with tape.
4. Fill the flowerpot with soil and plant a sprouted section of the potato into the soil.
5. Water the potato plant.
6. Place the potted potato in the opposite end of the shoebox from the hole you made.
7. Close the box, and place it in a window and leave it there for several days.  NO PEEKING!
8. You can open the box to water the plant if it becomes dry.  Only leave the lid off long enough to water the plant.  Quickly put the lid back on when you are finished … and leave it on.
9. When the sprout has come out of the hole at the end of the box, open the box up.

What happens?  The potato will grow toward the light.  Even though there was very little light entering the box, the spourut is able to find it and move toward it.  The sprout zig zags through the maze.  The sprout will be very white because chlorophyll (the stuff that makes plants green) can only be made when there is enough light.  Plants need light to make food.


  ^{<=== DIGG IT!}

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