The Welsh sun was kind to us as Pathfinders Cymru celebrated their ‘Potato Day’ at their monthly Garden Club at Ystalyfera Community Hall.
The potatoes in our raised beds were harvested by our team of participants and produced a surprisingly big bucket load, and so began an afternoon of spud-based activities.
A huge potato-print mural was created and an obstacle course negotiated in a spud-and-spoon challenge. Ten-pin potato bowling proved to be an entertaining challenge as did wiring potatoes to small lightbulbs to male potato-powered torches. Well, it worked on Google if not in reality, but it was fun trying!
Most fun was had making potato characters, scooping out the top third (we called them their ‘monkey brains’ and replacing with compost and grass seed. Some really grotesque-looking spuds were made, one having an unfortunate resemblance to Hitler!) Every one took their potato person home to grow a grass hair-do - we look forward to seeing what they look like coiffeured. Another success was making colourful volcanoes from scooped-out spuds using the reactive combination of baking soda, vinegar, detergent and a few drops of food colouring.
Then, as if all our birthdays had arrived at once, we harvested the large onions that Logan had sown at our first Gardening Club of the year in April. These were peeled of their brown papery skins which will be used to make a bright yellow tie-dye in the week ahead. Some of the onions were fried-up, splodged with ketchup and munched in hot dogs leaving plenty of onions and potatoes left over to taken be home.
Thank you to Mimi, Polly, Anwen, Mabli, Idris, Logan, Ianto, Italia, Perry, Harrison, Dylan, Kai, and Bran for making it such a memorable Potato Day.
Our Gardening Clubs are held on the third Saturday of the month at Ystalyfera and all are welcome. Look out for news of our next meeting on our Facebook page.
