“Let me tell you: A potato is an underground stem with all the properties of a stem but it shoots downward instead of up above the soil.
“You see a potato has many eyes, and these eyes grow when properly cut and planted. The white shoot pushes itself up out of the ground and bears leaves, which is the vine, or plant.
“The old potato which was planted to furnish food for the plant is gradually used up as the green leaves open out and grow to be a large healthy vine. Then, the old food-store being used, and the potato-plant flourishing, new roots or stems grow downward from the plant; these swell out, and out, and out, until all the little tendrils that would be long thin roots in another kind of vegetable, are swollen bulb-like tubers of the potato-plant.
“When the plant is exhausted and can furnish no more life and strength to its underground tubers, it dies, and the potatoes stop growing.
“If a plant above ground kept on indefinitely furnishing life and food to the potatoes underground, they would keep on increasing until one hill would supply more than one ever saw. But the plant produces just so many tubers and then stops.”
“Oh, that is funny! I never dreamed a potato worked so hard for us,” giggled Dot Starr, as the farmer concluded his talk.
“Is a carrot or turnip a stem or bulb, too?” asked Don.
“No, a carrot, like the radish, is a root and is grown from seed. As the seed bursts open, the sprout sends up two tiny leaves, while the root goes down into the earth to seek food for its plant. The root grows fatter and fatter as it keeps on feeding the green leaves that in turn give the root sunshine and air. In the fall when the plant dies, the carrot is ready to be dug out and used.
“If it remains in the ground through the winter, it freezes but does not die. In spring, it sends up a new shoot and this flowers to make seeds. The old carrot in the ground dies as its seeds are perfected, for it has produced the wherewithal for many more plants.”
“I s’pose the turnip and beet and other swollen roots are all the same then,” suggested Ned, who had been listening with great interest to Farmer Jones’ talk.