For the second year running 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.
For the seventeenth year, 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
In the school’s competition, which involved all of the island’s primary schools, VCP Class 3B won the greatest weight with 660g and our second winners were La Moye Reception A who won for the 35 Jersey Royals they grew in their bucket, an incredible achievement.
This year’s Constable’s competition had us on the edge of our seats but Richard Honeycombe. Connétable, St. Ouen topped the board with a staggering 42 tubers weighing 1383.7g which means that they will host next year’s weigh in.
Once again this year’s media competition yielded very mixed results with previous winners Gallery producing nothing more than some errant grass in their bucket and despite a valiant effort from ITV who pulled out all the stops this year and produced an actual crop they had to be satisfied with fourth position after the JEP won both categories with greatest weight at 361.1g and 15 tubers.
This year we had 105 Occupation VIPs participating in the competition, with representatives from 11 of the 12 parishes participating. The winner of the greatest weight and the highest yield was Mr George Le Gros of St Lawrence with 1517.9g and 27 tubers.
Our Women’s Institute winner was Diane Shield from La Moye who won both the greatest yield with 30 tubers and heaviest weight with her 621g crop .
With support from our sponsor Homefields the Genuine Jersey Products Association is already looking forward to next year.
