Potato Project
As the garden program here at Heritage Academy became established over the past few years, students started inquiring into what we can do to give back to the community. The Potato Project was then conceived as a joint initiative with the Ottawa Food Bank to gather urban farmers to help grow fresh produce to donate!
The food bank is in need of fresh, nutritious food, and we have harnessed a unique vertical growing technique to help fill that need by having people all over Ottawa help grow potatoes and a variety of other vegetables for the Food Bank. We are currently looking for volunteers to grow and harvest fresh food for the food bank.
Who: Anyone interested in growing fresh food to donate to the Food bank
What: As a volunteer you can collect seed as well as seedlings to grow to make up your fresh food donation
When : launch on May 31st (harvest in the fall)
We are inviting all volunteers, school participants and any interested members of the community to try to come between 12:00-4pm for the event, including fun, food and games!
Where: Heritage Academy, 207 Bayswater Ave
Why: We believe that more people should have access to nutritious, fresh food!
5 Comments
I greatly appreciate all the info I’ve read here. I will spread the word about your blog to other people. Cheers.
There are four plants sprouting in my barrel. Two are larger, two smaller. All is going well. Carolyn
Just wanted to say that we harvested our barrel today (Sept. 16) and we got 11 medium sized potatoes plus lots of little ones that didn’t amount to much. I researched a bit and found out it’s best to wait till you get flowers before harvesting – maybe 2 more weeks would have given us a better crop. It was really neat to find those big potatoes under the earth though! We were pretty excited. See you at the festivities on Oct. 3.
HI The projec was a real attaction all summer as the stalks grew thick and tall like jack in the bean stock, Unfortunately the harvest was a real dissapointment. Only harvested 16 potatoes some large and deformed various strange shapes and the total weight was 4.1 LBS whichj is a far cry from the expected 40 lbs+
Hello Potato Project,
We participated last year and our yeild wasn’t that great. I think the main problem was the nutrient mix in the city compost; too high a nitrogen to phosphorus&potasium ratio. I suggest that this year, you add wood ash (an excellent source of potassium) and egg-shell meal (an excellent source of phosphorus) to the compost. Maybe you could approach local restaurants with wood burning stoves or lots of eggs on their menus to see if they can supply it. I am considering doing that just for my barrel. Let me know if you will and whom; don’t want to ask the same people as you do.
Cheers,
Eric