Students harvest potatoes during the second week of school.  By the time students return, the potato plants have died back to the ground.  That's how we know they are ready to harvest.  Here and there students find a dried stem with a few dried leaves, but mostly there is no real evidence of the potatoes' locations.
After a short discussion about garden etiquette and safety, students spend time investigating what is growing in their gardens.
Each student is assigned a section of the garden that is their responsibility  for the remainder of the school year, and writes her name on the edge of the garden box,with a black permanent marker.  Her name will have faded away by next September. Then the fun began!  The kids love searching for potatoes! They display their finds proudly.

All but the new first grade students recall that we plant potatoes along the edge of the class garden beds to give them space to grow and to give us room to harvest without disturbing plants growing in the beds.  Students use trowels or child-sized spades to carefully remove soil to unearth potatoes.  Some are large, some are small and some have funny shapes.  Plus,  they come in different colors - red, white, and even purple! 

In addition to harvesting potatoes, students learn what is growing in their class beds and harvest ripe fruiting foods like cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, and squash.  This keeps the plants producing.  We leave root and stem vegetables in the the gardens until our harvest for Harvest Soup Day.  Students wash their harvest, and are treated to a sampling of garden fresh foods at the end of their class.

The potato harvest gives students their first food sampling of the school year.  Harvested potatoes are cooked, and cucumbers and tomatoes are cleaned for students to eat.  The harvest of one class is prepared by staff and volunteers for later classes.

After pulling weeds from our garden, we head to the potato washing station where we scrub the dirt off the potatoes.   "Gently, now.  The skin on freshly dug potatoes is very tender."   Then, it is off to the weighing station where we compare large and small, and then weigh our largest potato.

On the way, we see some amazing sights, including lots of sunflowers.  This one was not  completely open, yet it was loaded with pollinating  insects.

We deliver our freshly scrubbed potatoes to the cooking station where Granny's helpers cook the potatoes.  Here is another lesson in community.  The potatoes we taste were harvested by an earlier class, and the ones we harvest are prepared for a later class to taste.  In addition to potatoes, we sample cucumbers and tomatoes fresh from the gardens.Then it is time for our first class photos.