How Many Potatoes Are We Going To Get?

Problem:
We planted loads of potatoes at the community farm. How many potatoes are there going to be per family?

What we know:

• There are 20 beds of potatoes with two rows in each bed
• Each bed is about 125 metres long
• The potatoes where dropped by the planter around  35 centimetres apart

Solution:
How much was planted?

• There are 40 rows in total, each 125 metres long
• 40 x 125m = 5000m
• since there is 1000m in a km, we planted 5km of potatoes.

• the distance between potatoes is .35 metres
• 5000m ÷ .35 = 14285
• therefore we planted about 14285 seed potatoes.

Expected crop:
We looked it up and we found the average is 10 potatoes for every seed potato you plant, that means if we plant 14285 seed potatoes then we could expect a crop of 142850 potatoes.

In a book, my dad found that for every metre of seed potatoes you plant you get a crop of 2.5 kg of potatoes.

• 5000m x 2.5kg per metre = 12500kg of potatoes

How many per household:
At the moment there are 50 households but we hope that by harvest time we will have 75 households.

• 12500kg ÷ 75 = 166kg of potatoes
• 142850 ÷ 75 = 1905 potatoes

Conclusion:
If everything works out as we hope, each houshold will get about 1900 potatoes which should weigh about 166kg.

Planting Potatoes At The Farm On The Eco-village Land

I went to the farm on the eco-village land to plant potatoes. My job was to walk along behind and make sure that all of the potatoes got covered in soil because they sometimes don't. We planted at least 6 long beds the length of the field I was very tired!!!

 Suzanne and Mary sat on the back and filled the planter, while Pat drove the tractor

My Dad's Compost Pile

While we were at the allotments today dad stuck a thermometer in his compost pile and when he took it out the temperature was 68 degrees Celsius. That is very hot! We just checked our hot water and that is only 47 degrees. Dad says this is because all the bacteria inside the compost are eating everything and they give off heat.

Weeding The Garlic At The Garraun Lane Farm

 Today we went to the farm at garraun lane and weeded all the garlic. Suzanne, thomas, una, my dad and me did it, it took us 2 and a half hours start to finish.The reason we are weeding the garlic at this time of year is because it was planted in the autumn and the reason it took so long to weed is because it probably has not been weeded since it was planted and because most of the weeds were grass which is hard to get out with a hoe. Here are some photos:

Life On Top of The Mound

 We were on top of the mound today and we were looking in lots of the puddles to see if we could find any living things, and we did, and this is what we found:

The Hares

We saw a hare in the future woodland today, we were told that there are two of them so we went to have a look (don't worry, some one is coming to catch them and put them outside the fence). Here is a shot we got of one of them:

Continuation On Our Comunity Woodland

Planting the trees

They have started to put in the trees for our community woodland. Here are some pictures:
 

There are hundreds of theses bags full of trees in the education cabin.

That is one tall thin tree

Update On Sowing Lettuce Seeds In Trays

Remember when I sowed all the different types of lettuce seeds for the cloughjordan community farm at the allotments. Here they are.

They look like an army of lettuce seedlings that are going to take over the world.

My dad pulled out some to make sure that there was only one seedling per module.

My Lettuce Plants

I planted some lettuce seeds for our front garden today. Soon I will also plant some herbs and flowers along with some more vegetables.

We Found Frog Spawn

When we were collecting water for our ecosystem jars, we found some frogs spawn in the pond!!! Or we think it is frog spawn.

Ecosytem Jars

 

My dad  and I have started an experiment. We collected water from the stream in front of our house and from the pond that has formed near where the woodland is being planted, and put it in jars. In the photo above, the jar on the left is water from the stream, and the jar on the right is water from the pond. We put the jars upside down so that no air can get in, and we are going to leave them on the windowsill to see what happens. Dad says that it will turn into a miniature ecosystem, depending on what tiny creatures, plants and and other things that are in the water. I will keep you updated.

Sowing Lettuce Seeds In Trays

Dad and I went to the allotments today and we sowed lettuce seeds in seed trays, there are 150 cells in each tray, we planted 6 different varieties, one per tray. There will be around 900 lettuce plants. They are for our community farm. Here are some pictures of the different varieties:

Suzan Butter Head Lettuce
Merveille Des Quatre Saisons (Marvel of Four Seasons) Butter Head Lettuce

Lollo Rossa Loose Leaf Lettuce

Little Gem Cos Lettuce

May Queen Butter Head Lettuce

We sowed another variety called Till Loose Leaf but we could not find an image of it. It is like a dense rosette with arrow head shaped leaves.