That's really interesting. First they tell us that very young babies and some animals have a sense of numbers and now plants!

On the advice of many, I purchased potato "seeds", which are potatoes produced specifically for crops. They have been inspected at a state level, and from what I've heard have been treated with a coating to prevent diseases and also aide in product yield (??). Store bought cooking potatoes have some sort of growth inhibitor to prevent the eyes from sprouting too quickly. I purchased the seed potatoes and cut them into quarters, each quarter having at least one eye on it (this is where the tubers grow from). I planted ours in mid-April and I just started harvesting them this past week.

This past spring I checked all around for pricing. The Home Centers were crazy expensive, and the mail order had shipping fees. As Dave mentioned, the best prices were in 2 of my locally owned places. The first was a locally-owned hardware store, the second was our local Farmer's Coop. They were both extremely reasonable in their prices. The Coop had the best price... I think it was .50 per pound. If there was a downside, it was that they only had 3 varieties... Red Pontiac, Yukon Gold, and Kennebec. I got half a lb. of Yukons, and a half lb. of Kennebecs. I cut each seed potato into pieces, leaving 2 'eyes' per piece, and planted about a 20' row. The return for that 50 cents is great! I'll be using the smaller potatoes from the spring harvest for a fall crop. I haven't tried it before, so we'll see how it goes.

This is an interesting discussion! Jim Mat, for mashed, our process thus far: we have been peeling, cutting into big chunks, boiling til tender, draining, drying off water, then adding the other ingredients which thus far have been butter, sour cream, milk, and crushed fresh garlic. My husband does the mashing (I have carpal tunnel).He is good and fast. No lumps. I don't have a ricer. Last year he asked 30 year old our son to do it. We kept sending him back to the stove because they were lumpy. Husband was supervising the adding of ingredients. But they turned out to be heavy, so there is something to the hand of who is doing the mashing. They will be a vehicle for the gravy, and we don’t want to mask the flavor of that, so we don’t add too much more to them. But they do need to have good flavor on their own. There's never enough gravy.