After putting our potatoes into trays to chit, we planted them on Monday 15th March. We filled our bags with compost and gently placed them in. Every Monday when I was gardening I watered them. Sometimes I watered them on a Wednesday as well. I was getting very excited about digging my potatoes on 22nd June as our school needs a good garden makeover. My potatoes were looking really healthy, when 2 weeks before digging, a cheeky little bird, a wagtail, made her nest in my potato bag. To start with there was only one egg, but the next day there ware 5 and the Mum was sat on them. I knew then that I could not dig my potatoes. On 22nd June 3 eggs hatched. I check the birds regularly and they are doing well. I hope my potatoes will be nice and big when I can dig them! I told this story to the local newspaper and they came to take my photo and it was put in the paper with my story. My Mum has cut it out!

We were all very proud of our potato sacks. They were full of tall plants and lush green leaves and the children had watered and tended them carefully. When we came back after the half term holiday, 1sack had been stolen from the school grounds, sack and all completely whisked away. We are very disappointed. We have one bag left and had 1.4kg of potatoes. Who would have thought it! Anyone got any tips for next year?

I am just sending thanks for another great project year. Our Gardening club is getting the hang of this. Maybe next year we will have a really good crop. This year we harvested and cooked the potatoes all in one session to the delight of all the Gardeners. The 'hot' potatoes were eaten in record speed.

Jake and Joe harvesting the potatoes, ready to be weighed and cooked for school lunch.

The children loved growing the potatoes. They grew them with excitement they watered them every day as they knew this was very important. When we harvested them there were screams of excitement again as they were finding them. We have given some to the after school provision which they have cooked . The children and staff all said they were lovely. The children who grew them also took some home and they also said how lovely and different they tasted. I think this is a great opportunity for the children to have a go at growing vegetables. This is a little green club with 10 children and we try and grow as much as we can. So we would like to register again for 2011 if we may.

We had great fun growing our potatoes, first we chitted them, then we planted them. They grew lots when we were on holiday. We could not believe that they weighed the same.
Tasting - Sara liked the Rocket potatoes best as 'they were sweet and tasty. they tasted like honey'. Emily G preferred Vales Emerald potatoes ' i liked their golden colour and they made delicious potato salad'.

When digging for potatoes we found an ants nest and a newt - the children loved seeing ants carry thier eggs to safety, and everyone had the chance to see the newt up close! Sadly, our portatoes were a bit on the small size as we planted them late, but our natural history find made up for that!

One of the children who attends our PreSchool is the daughter of a very busy potato farmer. Mr Leverton arrived at PreSchool to help us plant our potatoes; he helped us find a good spot in the sunshine for them to grow and left us with strict instructions to give them plenty of water - which come rain or shine, we have! And now look - Mr Leverton came back on harvest day to help us lift our potatoes - we loved getting our hands dirty and found over 90 potatoes. He said we had done very well and when we get big we can go and help him grow potatoes!! We best get eating our potatoes then. From counting, planting, watering, digging and weighing and of course eating we have had a great time growing our potatoes.

We enjoyed planting our potatoes, we used it as part of our science and garden club. The best part was on Tuesday when we Harvested them we could not believe the crop that we got. Class 1, 2 and 3 really enjoyed this project and hope to participate next year.

Our potatoes were growing well in a sheltered site. Then one morning at the beginning of May we inspected our crop, and found trhat overnight frost had damaged the leaves. They had turned grey at the tips, and curled over. A few days later we cut off the dead parts, and eventually the plants recovered. However we think that this setback slowed down their development, so the crop was lighter than we have had in previous years.

Our Garden Buddies once more took part in the Grow your own Potatoes campaign. Ever ready to learn from our previous year's mistakes when we forgot to water often enough, we started this year with a firm plan of action. Children from year 1 to year 6 joined together and planted the bags. We obtained simple watering caps that we could fix to old drink bottles. These were lighter for the youngest children to use and set up a watering plan. Each week we made sure that someone took responsibility for watering the plants. Finally the big day came when we emptied our bag out into a wheelbarrow and searched for the potatoes. One bag was fine but in the other we discovered hundreds of red ants, along with their eggs. Gingerly we extracted the potatoes and were pleased to see that the crop was still ok. Obviously our ants were not potato lovers. We watched as the ants hurridly rescued their eggs and restored their home. Two lessons in one - biology and botany.

Class 3 have been so proud of our potato plants but in the Whitsun holiday, after 2 days of not being watered, they wilted quite badly. Mrs U tried to bring them back to life (they were started to get there!) when we had THE biggest thunder storm with an enormous amount of rain which flattened the plants completly... We didn't give up though and continued to tend to them even though they were flat and yellow! On Tuesday we harvested both our crops, weighing 1.47kg each! We are proud of urselves (luckily, the potatoes we planted later in out garden beds are doing very nicely!)

We were late planting out our potatoes but they soon started growing quickly. We have also sown: carrots, radishes, corgettes, sweetcorn, spring onions and lettuces. The children have been putting stickers on the weather chart and watering the potatoes every day in the recent hot weather. We will harvest our potatoes on Monday and decide how to cook them - the children are really looking forward to that!

Well how excited are our children, we have been looking forward to harvest our potatoes.Arbourthorne Community Primary School Integrated Resource Unit has 15 children and the FS1 children have been growing the potatoes for the unit. They are waiting to see how many potatoes have grown in their bags. They have been watering and praying for sunshine to help them grow. The bit they are looking forward to is cooking their potatoes, our head teacher Miss Langley says her favourite is 'chips' !! We are going to cook an omlette using free range eggs from the local rare breeds farm,our potatoes, our onions. Hopefully we will have enough to make chips too.

Well how excited are our children, we have been looking forward to harvest our potatoes. Arbourthorne Community Primary School Integrated Resource Unit has 15 children and the FS1 children have been growing the potatoes for the unit. They are waiting to see how many potatoes have grown in their bags. They have been watering and praying for sunshine to help them grow. The bit they are looking forward to is cooking their potatoes, our head teacher Miss Langley says her favourite is 'chips' !! We are going to cook an omlette using free range eggs from the local rare breeds farm,our potatoes, our onions. Hopefully we will have enough to make chips too.

WOW!!! Our potatoes have gone wild in the rain! The Rocket have grown much faster than the Vales Emerald but they soon caught up. They are massive! The gnomes and the scarecrow have kept the pests away and now I can't wait dig them up and eat them! I bet they taste scrummy! I hope there is enough to eat for a few weeks. I have been learning about life cycles and gardening so this has been a great experience-thank you Potato Council!!

We went to water our potatoes as they are getting really big. We saw that they were by some thorns so we moved them away. As we were down there we put a few more drainage holes in the bags and felt small round lumps against the plastic bags. We have discovered our first potatoes! HURRAY!

Well the kit arrived our TA emptied the bag and we looked inside. Our TA asked what we thought all the different things in the pack were used for. We came up with some great ideas. Our TA thought one little boys idea was really good, we use the bags with holes in to let the worms out of the muck !!!  it made her laugh.  We filled our bags with the compost and then we put out seed potatoes to Chit. The potatoes were ready to plant, we looked at them and saw the shoots ready to grow our potatoes. Out into our school quad we went, we were all told about the tools we were going to use and how we had to be very careful with then as they were sharp.  We were very careful planting the seed potatoes, we then gave them some water and left them to grow. It was time for our Easter holidays so we hoped our potatoes would be ok.  When we came back to school we couldnt wait to look at our bags and yes !! they had started to grow. Looking at them we could see shoots that were green and three of them. We were very excited and we will keep you informed on the progress of the potatoes.

Hi there, I home educated my daughter, so growing potatoes is a bit different for us. We've been able to spend an entire week focuses on all things potatoes! We worked our way through the excellent teachers resources and picked some of the worksheets to do. My daughter's favourite was studying the 'Eat well' plate. She was delighted to find that her diet was balanced and healthy and we were able to tie this in with why she was growing well, was happy and healthy. It really seemed to let things fall into place for her - how our food is our medicine. We measured our plants after 3 weeks and found them to be 10cms across and just 2 cms high, but after a lot of rain over the past 48 hours, we'll be measuring and drawing them again to see the differences. She has blogged about what we have done here: http://veronastrauss.com/verona/all-about-potatoes/ We're busy keeping our weather chart too and so far we've had more sunny days than anything else. Last year we had over 2.5kgs of potatoes, so it will be great to see what we manage to grow this year: http://veronastrauss.com/verona/potato-harvest/

Note from GYOP - please remember that potatoes must be planted in the bags supplied  to be eligible to enter the competition in June

My 'school' is a little different to the idea most people have of school, as young people attend my Get Up & Grow Project, when usually, they don't get on too well in school, for whatever reason. The two young people who have been in charge of the Grow Your Own Potatoes are Kirsty and Josh (who are 16). I want to tell you about Kirsty; she came for the first day back in winter time and said 'I don't think this is for me Dawn'. I said to her: 'give it another go Kirsty because we are fast approaching the best time of the year in the garden where everything comes to life' - then your potatoes arrived in the post! A little later Kirsty said: 'You're right Dawn, and my Grandfather does all this' Kirsty and Josh planted the potatoes and I have attached two photos of Kirsty and Josh (only Josh on the second one as , sadly Kirsty was ill that day). Kirsty has now got the bug! She was supposed to attend a talk inside arranged last week and she said: 'I'm not staying in on a lovely day like this I want to be out in the garden!' - I rest my case.

Message from GYOP - Not eligable for the competition due to age but what a lovely story

Mimmy, age 6 who is home educated and growing potoatoes as part of his science topic, says: "I think the Rocket potatoes are growing very well because they are over the top of the packet. Doffy my sister is growing the emerald potatoes and they are smaller. Maybe it is because they are different sorts because we used the same soil in each bag and they are next to each other. Is the soil working better in my bag or is it because my bag has more rain or sun? If you see my potatoes you think they are a tree, so maybe it is being a different type of potato." Doffy, aged 3, who has helped with the experiment says "Mimmy's potatoes are very big. They are like a rocket, going up into the air, and into people's mouths. My potatoes are really little, like something like a rose."

Potato Pete was centre of attention as children from Great Lumley enjoyed a Potato Day Experience at their school on Tuesday 11th March - first prize in our prize draw competition where 6 schools were randomly selected and asked to demonstrate their commitment to healthy eating. All 6 schools demonstrated a very high standard but Lumley Infants and Nursery were particularly impressive with their Healthy Grub Club and fantastic school garden. As part of the prize, the children enjoyed a potato growing lesson from a local farmer before planting their own seed potatoes. It was also a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the International Year of the Potato and the children marked the occasion by colouring in flags from the top potato growing countries areound the world and sampling a delicious Ecuadorian potato dish! Well done also to the runners up who each recieved garden centre vouchers: Cluny Primary School, Buckie, Banffshire Eccleston Lane Ends Primary School, Prescot, Merseyside New Marston Primary School, Headington, Oxon Plumpton Primary School, Lewes, East Sussex St John Boste RC Primary School, Washington, Tyne & Wear

I really liked gardening club, I enjoyed planting and growing the potatoes and looking after the garden. Charlotte Yr 6

I enjoyed gardening and planting the potatoes as part of the Grow your own potatoes, because our school is trying to be healthier and growing vegetables will encourage us to eat more healthily! Annabel Year 5

This year our gardening club have been very busy growing potatoes. We carefully followed the instructions from the Potato Council and to be environmentally friendly even used our school re-cycling bags to grow them in. We were delighted to yield a really healthy crop and have submitted our entry to the council. Miss Roberts very kindly offered to hold an after school cookery session for the club and she came up with three superb recipes for the children to cook the potatoes. We made roasted potato salad, cheese and potato bake and leek and potato soup. These were all enjoyed by the children at home. Miss Clarke & Mrs Jones