From Farm to Fork at St. Kevin’s N.S
By Oisin Hand

   
Recently at school we got to enjoy the fruits of our labours when 5th and 6th class tucked into some homemade
 (school made!)  chips.
 
         At the start of 5th class we decided we would plant spuds in our school garden and make chips with them.
I contacted the local cereals and root crop farmer John Carroll for advice.
 
On 19/5/21 he came to school with some Maris Piper seed.
He gave us a demo on how to prepare the soil and take out weeds. I had already worked farm yard manure through the soil. Then he showed us how to make the drills and how to plant and harvest.
 
The next day we started to plant. Myself, Jude Bellew, Julie Kearney and Alfie Winstone from 6th Class and Ruby O’Callaghan, Jamie Johnson and Erin McCullough from 5th Class began by removing the weeds and loosening the soil.
 
After preparing the soil we dug drills. The drills were ½ metre apart and the seed was planted at least 15cm deep with their ‘eyes’ upwards. The seed was covered with the soil and left for nature to take over.
 
Then we went on our summer holidays. During the holidays the spuds grew well along with some weeds, so on a couple of occasions we weeded them.
 
After returning to school in September the crop was ready to harvest. on September the 13th we harvested. The yield was very good. From a 6.5m2 plot we got 7.4kg of spuds.
 
 
After we got it all harvested we tasted our produce by making and enjoying some homemade [school made] chips.
 
 
They were tastetastic !