What an exciting day! 10 Year 2 Gardeners, accompanied by Mrs Senior, Mrs Bryant, Mrs Livingstone and Mr Lynn went to the Norfolk Show to harvest our crop of the potatoes as part of the British Potato Council Grow Your Own Potatoes Challenge (we planted the seed potatoes during a visit to the Norfolk Showground back in March). We are pleased to report that we harvested 520g of Rocket Potatoes and 500g of Maris Peer Potatoes coming third overall. We also enjoyed lots of other activities such as milking, chick handling, pedal tractor riding, mint sauce making etc… and the weather was fantastic as you can see!
Another dry session which we made the most of by transplanting the rest of our seedlings. Gardening Club Members then planted a Sunflower Seed to take home and grow with the promise of a prize for the tallest!
Thankfully, the weather stayed dry again and we managed to transplant all of our Lettuce, Mange Tout, Carrot and Beetroot seedlings (which we planted in modular trays to grow in the Green House earlier in the year) into the Gardening Club beds. We even had a few left over Lettuce plants to pot on and hopefully sell to parents when they have grown a little more!
A busy session in the School Garden saw Members planting Sweetcorn (Red Strawberry and Minipop) in modular trays to start growing in the Green House, plus transplanting Lettuce and Beetroot seedlings grown earlier in the year into one of the Gardening Club beds.
A lovely sunny afternoon session saw Gardening Club Members sowing Peas, Tomatoes, Spinach and Carrots in modular trays to start growing in the Green House.
For the last 5 years our schools’ Gardening Club has taken part in the British Potato Council (BPC) Grow Your Own Potatoes Competition which involves (over a 3 month period) planting, growing and harvesting 2 varieties of seed potatoes (Rocket and Maris Piers) provided free by the BPC. See www.schools.potato.org.uk for more information. For the first time this year, the BPC are working with the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association (RNAA) at the Norfolk Showground to provide a fun and educational environment through which our children can learn more about potatoes and help bring the ‘Grow Your Own Potato Challenge’ to life. The RNAA invited our Year 2 Gardening Club Members to visit the Norfolk Showground on 17th March (to plant our ‘Grow Your Own Potatoes’ and take part in learning sessions) and again on 25th June (to harvest our crop during the Royal Norfolk Show).
All of the current Year 2 Gardeners spent an amazing afternoon taking part in the following activities: ‘Farm to Shelf’ with Matt and William from Heygate Farms, ‘Do you know your potatoes?’ with Moya from FACE, Planting with Felicity and Pam and finally Potato Farmng/Machinery with Farmer Tim from Buxton Potatoes. The weather was lovely and sunny and we are all looking forward to our next visit in June. Go to www.mustardtv.co.uk and click on browse videos until you find ‘Not just small fries: School children plant potatoes at the Showground’ to see what we got up to!
The weather was sunny and dry for Gardening Club which meant that we could get lots of jobs done in the School Garden. Year 2 Mentors chose a Year 1 partner then we split into 3 groups which rotated during the session so that everyone had a go at everything. One group were shown, and had a go at, how to use secateurs safely to prune the Raspberry canes, another group cleared the Strawberry bed, dug in some new compost and planted old and new Strawberry plants and the last group planted up some hanging baskets with Narcissi and Primulas. A very productive session as you can see
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Sadly, the weather was far too wet to venture out into the School Garden so we made good use of the time by creating some beautiful new signs. These signs will appear in the beds once our seedlings have been transplanted from the Greenhouse – then everyone who visits the garden will be able to see what we are growing.
