Spud Harvest

Harvest Time

I didn't have high hopes of great success since the last time we did this, two years ago, we didn't grow more than a dozen potatoes.

But the plants looked big and healthy so it showed promise.

We started by sharing the book Tops & Bottoms 

by Janet Stevens

I like this book for a couple of reasons.

One, it focuses on parts of the plants that are edible and not.

Two, it talks about consequences that may happen when you rely on someone else to do all the hard work.

Before we started pulling at the leaves I asked the question

"Which part of the potato plant do we eat, the tops or the bottoms?"

Interesting that half of the children said the tops.

Time to pull and dig and find out.

The expression on the little boy's face shows how hard it was

for them to pull the potatoes out of the soil.

Some stems broke but we managed to get potatoes out.

It was exciting.

Then we used our hands and shovels to dig for the rest.

When all the leaves and stems (the tops) were gone 

we thought we had found all the potatoes (the bottoms).

But then two little boys, brothers, arrived and wanted to play in the soil.

Sure.

And we found a lot more potatoes deep in the tub.

They had the privilege of washing the spuds too.

But how many spuds did we grow?

We sorted by size - 

small, medium, large.

 We estimated how many potatoes there were altogether.

 

Then counted each group and added them together.

For a grand total of 47.

YAY!

Next week is our Spud Celebration with our big buddy class.