New Plants from Old
Ascher sent me this photo the other day:
Any idea what is happening to this potato? You can actually see two different parts of the potato plant beginning to grow. The skinny white things are the roots and the larger purple and yellow thing in the center is the baby stem. Each one of those growths has the potential to turn into a new potato plant and to grow new potatoes.
If Ascher wanted, he could cut that potato up into pieces--each piece with one of those new growths on it--and bury all the pieces separately. Each piece would grow into a new plant. Then in the fall he could dig the plant up and he would find more potatoes under the ground, attached to the roots.
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Ascher's photo reminded me of a science project that I did when I was about Ascher's age. I
stuck some toothpicks into the side of an onion and suspended it in a
bowl of water.
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I made sure to have most of the onion above the water but the roots
kept in the water at all times. Here is what the roots of
an onion look like:
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It took several weeks to get any results. I won't tell you what happened. If you want to find out, you'll need to conduct your own experiment.
You can set up something similar at home with your own onion. Or you can do the same thing with a potato and see what happens. Sweet potatoes also work well.
Then I wondered if I could do the same thing with any root vegetable, so I went to the grocery store and bought a beet and a turnip. Unfortunately, the roots were cut off of both, so I don't know what, if anything, will happen.
At least the beet has the top part still on, so I could tell which part to stick in the water: |
The
turnip had both the top and the bottom cut off. Fortunately, I knew
that the roots grow out from the white part, but I'm still not sure
anything is going to grow from this because it has gotten so hacked up: |
But I was on a roll, so I decided to see what would happen if I put just the root part of an onion in water:  |
Finally, I decided to put the top of a carrot in water:  |
I don't know if any of these root vegetables will grow anything. It's been several days since I've set these up, and I haven't noticed any changes yet, but I remember that it took a long time to see any results with my onion experiment back when I was a kid, so I'll just have to be patient and check everything everyday to make sure they all have plenty of water.
In the meantime, why don't you try an experiment like this? Then we can compare results!
Try a sweet potato, or a radish. Or any other root vegetable, including the ones that I've tried here.
Try using the whole vegetable, or just the top or the bottom part of it.
And be patient; it may take a few weeks to see any new growth.
Take photographs of the progress of your experiment over time.
If you send them to gsimonelli@leffellschool.org, I will add them to this page and we can all follow your progress. Good luck with your experiment, and be sure to let me know what develops!
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