The doors of St Lawrence Parish Hall were opened this morning to welcome in this year’s competitors of the Genuine Jersey, Jersey Royal potato growing competition, sponsored by Homefields. for the last in a week-long series of potato weigh-ins. Starting in late January, primary schools, media, the Women’s Institute, Connetables and for a second year, Occupation VIPs from each parish, have been nurturing their seed potatoes provided by the Le Maistre family of MasterFarms, in a bid for potato growing glory. This year their buckets were also filled with soil from Infrastructure, Housing and Environment’s green waste facility
John Garton, Chief Executive Officer of Genuine Jersey, said: “It’s hard to believe that we’ve come to the end of another Genuine Jersey, Jersey Royal potato growing competition, the last 12 weeks have flown by. We’ve had a busy week gathering the results from our competitors throughout the island and the final weigh in is always a fantastic opportunity to bring everyone together to see how both the media and Constables have fared as we dig their buckets in front of our other winners, this morning was particularly eventful with a very last minute arrival once the Constables winner had been announced. Once again though the Jersey Royal really is the winner!”
In the school’s competition, which involved all of the island’s primary schools, St Michael’s School Class 2B won the greatest weight with 1,532g and were joint winners for the 49 Jersey Royals they grew in their bucket, the same numbers as Grouville School Class 4K with 900g and 49 Jersey Royals, an incredible achievement.
For the second year running the Connetable of St Lawrence’s bucket yielded the greatest weight at 1020.2gms and they also scooped the greatest number of tubers at 33, making it a double victory for the Parish
This year’s media competition saw a very mixed bag of results, with some buckets not even making it to the weigh-in as they’d died before the big day and low numbers all round from those who did take part. After being crowned winners for the last two years sadly ITV’s bucket yielded zero potatoes this year but in a triumphant comeback the double victory went to Gallery Magazine with a winning weight of 137.9gms and 16 tubers.
This year we had 105 Occupation VIPs participating in the competition, with representatives in each parish participating. The winner of the greatest weight was Mr Alan Romerill Roffrey from St Mary with 1,470g (28 tubers) and three buckets from different parishes yielded 35 tubers each, Mrs Daphne Tingley, Eileen Palmer of St Lawrence and Mr Vincent of St Saviour were our joint winners.
Once again the efforts of the Women’s Institute were impressive and for a second year the heaviest crop was grown by Phyliss Gouédart of Le Hocq with 28 tubers weighing 1,134g but she was pipped to the post of the double win by Rose of St Martin’s WI Group who grew 30 tubers (295g) in her bucket.
With support from our sponsor Homefields the Genuine Jersey Products Association is already looking forward to next year.
