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Grow Sweet Potato Vine for Grades K-3
Materials:One healthy sweet potato; 2-litre, clear soda bottle; three tooth picks or wooden skewers, water, clean stones or gravel. Easy Instructions: Cut the top off your bottle (start cut with a sharp knife, then use scissors). Place stones or gravel in bottom of bottle. Suspend your potato, narrow end down, into the bottle. Use toothpicks, punched into potato and resting on sides of bottle, to hold in place. Fill bottle with water so that at least half of your potato is submerged. Suggestion: A sweet potato purchased from a natural foods store or farmers' market may sprout sooner than one from a supermarket, because it's less likely to have been sprayed with a sprout inhibitor. Before you prepare your experiment, ASK students what plants eat. The general answer to this question is "nutrients collected from soil by roots." But what about plants grown in water? Students may guess that there are nutrients in what appears to be pure, clear water. Enough to support a whole, big plant? Your sweet potato vine should show new roots within a week or two. Leafy purple sprouts will appear shortly after. Use a magnifying glass to see tiny root hairs and to examine little sprouts. Ask students to PREDICT what will happen next. WHAT IS YOUR VINE EATING? (Hint: A sweet potato is a root tuber, a fleshy root that stores food for a plant and produces adventitious shoots or shoots growing from unusual positions—in this case, out of the sides of the root. What's happening to the potato, itself?) Your vine will continue to grow for months if you are careful to replenish water and/or change it when your bottle becomes cloudy. You may wish to plant your sweet potato outdoors in the spring, after danger of frost. It may not survive but, on the other hand, you may find a small crop of sweet potatoes in the fall. Dig up the plant and use one of the new potatoes to grow another vine. |
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