Welcome to Grow Your Own Potatoes
We hope you like our NEW website and find it much easier to navigate.
Whether you are taking part in GYOP or just looking for information about potatoes for your class, you will find everything you need.
Resources and activities for pupils to complete at home.
Almost 14,000 potato growing kits have been planted in schools nationwide this year. The aim is to educate school children all about potatoes: where they come from, how they grow and their role in a healthy balanced diet.
Many of these planted potatoes have now gone home with children following the closure of schools on 20th March. So, if you are now looking for advice on how to look after potatoes at home, look no further. Here are some simple instructions with tips and advice for caring for your potatoes and getting the best possible crop at harvest.
For those of you looking for ways to entertain and educate your children over the next few weeks/months, growing produce is a great way to do this. It is also a great opportunity to get outdoors. Here are some easy to follow instructions for growing potatoes, as well as some fun potato related activities too.
If you are looking for more food related ideas and inspiration to support children studying at home, visit the NEW remote learning hub on the Food - a fact of life website. Here you will find FREE cross-curricular resources and activities for primary and secondary aged pupils to use at home.
Keep in touch
We would love to hear how you and your potatoes are getting along. Share your pictures, as well as hints and tips you think might help others.
Twitter @potatoes4school FB @potatoesforschools
Register
Sign up NOW for GYOP 2021
Please note: There seems to have been some confusion when ordering kits for 2020. As in previous years, if you would like to receive more than one FREE growing kit for your school in 2021 (up to a maximum of 4 per school) you will need to register separately for each kit. You will also need to use a different email address for each registration.
Please be aware that ONLY Primary schools in England, Scotland and Wales (5 to 11 year-olds) are eligible to take part in the GYOP project and will be allocated kits.
Chitting
Start chitting your seed potatoes on Tuesday 18 February 2020, this will take about two weeks.
Chitting will speed up the ageing process of your potatoes, by exposing them to light and, more importantly, a bit of warmth. This will cause the eyes of the seed potato to start sprouting and should result in a better crop.
Planting
Tuesday 3 March 2020
All schools taking part in the GYOP competition will be planting on this date. This year we have extended the project by 1 week to give you 15 weeks to grow a successful crop before harvesting on Tuesday 16 June 2020
By now, you should by now have chitted your potatoes but don’t worry if not, you can still plant them, just be extra careful not to over water them before they have had a chance to get established.
Also, don’t forget to label your grow-bags to help identify the variety growing. You could win a prize for your school by showing us how you labelled your bags.
Growing
15 weeks from planting to harvesting.
To grow a successful crop of potatoes in your grow bags, your potatoes will need: light, water, food, space and air.
Make sure you find the perfect spot to stand your bag, keep the soil moist but not wet and don’t forget to top up your soil as the plant grows, to give the potatoes plenty of room.
Watch out for late frosts too, potato plants hate frost!
Harvest
Tuesday 16 June 2020
Now is the exciting time when you find out if all of your hard work has paid off, just 15 weeks since planting.
If you remove the green tops from your plants, it makes them easy to pull out of the bag without damaging them, this means you can re-use the bags to grow something else.
Once out of the bags, the fun begins; roll up those sleeves and rummage through the soil to find your potatoes, just watch out for the mother tuber!!
Competition
All entries for GYOP 2020 must be entered before Friday 26 June 2020
Don't forget to keep your two crops separate and weigh them separately once you have washed the dirt off. Remember also, you must weigh your potatoes in grams
- Submit the weight of your Rocket crop
- Submit the weight of your Regional crop
- Submit the weight of your largest individual potato (any variety)
- Submit the number of potatoes in a crop from a single variety
Featuring
NEW Principle Sponsor for GYOP
Support Resources
