Harvest Time!

 Today was potato harvesting day!  Here is what one student wrote this morning before we started our harvest:
"Today we are going to harvest the potatoes!  I am super excited to harvest the potatoes!  The potatoes we grew are Warba Seed Potatoes.  They need soil, water, air and sun to survive and now it's time to harvest them.  Every day Ryan picks one classmate and Mrs. Dressler to water the potatoes.  We put our potatoes outside the grade three classroom so they get plenty of sun and air.  The potatoes grow in tubers.  Tubers grow from the roots, store food and grow to be potatoes.  When we talked about potatoes we learned that the leaves are pointed and facing down because it's like a slide for the water so it can slide to the roots.  After we harvest potatoes we will ask parents to bring potato toppings.  And then eat the potatoes!"

 There was lots of excitement as we began by pulling on our stems to see if we could pull the plant out by the roots.  We found big and little potatoes attached!

 We wondered what the empty, squishy potato skin was that we found in our pots, and learned that it was the seed potato that we planted!

 Here's another one of those seed potatoes!

 Look how tiny this potato is!

 When we got back into the classroom, we estimated how many potatoes were in our tub.  After counting them in groups of five, we discovered that we had harvested 219 potatoes!  Mrs. de Jager noticed that the potatoes grew larger this year than other years, and we thought it might be because we had such a nice warm spring!

 Then we skyped with Ms. Stroet's class, who had also harvested potatoes today.  Here we are giving them our total!

 They didn't have a chance to total up their potatoes yet, but each group had counted, so we helped them add them up.  They had harvested 206 potatoes!

It looks like they had the same variety in sizes that we did, even though they planted their potatoes one week earlier than we did.

On Wednesday we will cook up the potatoes and enjoy them as potato 'sundaes,' with toppings like sour cream, bacon, cheese, salt and pepper, and all the other yummy toppings that parents are bringing!  How do you like to eat your potatoes?