Last month, I wrote about an activity that my dad did with Sloan. They planted tomatoes together in early June and then watched them grow over the summer. Early last month, they picked them together.

Some of the progression photos of Sloan and her tomato plant.

What I didn’t mention in that blog post is that they planted more than tomatoes. As a matter of fact, they planted potatoes too. Around the same time in June, Sloan and her papa planted seed potatoes in a large pot with rich soil.

My dad and Sloan preparing the pot for planting potatoes.

My dad let Sloan drop the bottom layer of the soil in the pot and then place the seed potatoes on top of that. My dad then dumped the majority of the soil into the pot, burying the seed potatoes. Over the weeks that followed, the two would monitor and water the potatoes.

Sloan planting the seed potatoes.

Exactly four months later, my dad and Sloan went back out to the pot. Both grandfather and granddaughter worked together to dump the pot over. My dad removed the pot revealing a neat mound of dirt.

Sloan and my dad dumping over the pot.

With potatoes already exposed in the soil, Sloan lived out every toddler’s dream and sifted through the dirt to find them all. After a couple minutes of using her hands, my dad gave Sloan a hand shovel that allowed her to find even more of the treasure.

Sloan finding potatoes.

The harvest was bountiful. Although most of the potatoes were on the smaller side, Sloan discovered some large ones as well. After she had found them all, we pretty much had to pull her away from the remaining dirt because she was still holding out hope that a couple more would surface in the dirt.

Sloan and my dad grew more than 50 potatoes.

In the end, my dad and Sloan grew more than 50 potatoes. Being the guy that my dad is, he wanted to give us them all. We won’t let that happen, but we do look forward to cooking with some of them. As I mentioned before, this type of activity is perfect for a grandpa and granddaughter to do AND it is a great lesson in horticulture. Make sure to read future Thursday Rundowns to learn how we end up using the potatoes. Don’t Blink.