Bruins enrolled in the Environmental Horticulture class gained recognition for their year-long efforts in growing plants by hosting a plant sale in the FFA garden on May 12.
The group sold six-pack trays of plant starts as well as six-inch pots that contained plant varieties such as cucumbers, sunflowers, spaghetti squash, and herbs.
Agricultural Science Teacher, Holly Hockett believed that the sale was a success and reflected on the reasoning for running one.
“Initially it was just a project for my horticulture class, so it was a required component of the course, and that’s because being able to work in a greenhouse and understand greenhouse operations is an important part of entering the greenhouse and horticulture industry so, students chose their own their own seeds, they chose their own products that they were going to market, and it really was their project. Hopefully it will expand in the future, but it started in class.”
Ms. Hockett also added that she hopes to expand the event in the future.
“My hope is to expand it so that we have more varieties and more stock,” she said. “Maybe have it [held on] multiple days so that customers can come whenever their schedule is most available, but I would also like to combine it with an Ag Showcase day where we have a plant sale going on. We [would] have Agriscience boards set up for display for my agriscience classes and then possibly a mechanics component as well.”
Senior Brody Russell assisted in running the plant sale commented on how the sale went.
“I think the plant sale went pretty good. With what I know, we completely broke even, so with that and with the future years the horticulture class should be self-reliant and with the profit of coming years.”
Many people had a positive experience with the plant sale and look forward to the next one.
“It was overall a great experience. Everything was super-duper organized, in rows and all the plants looked fantastic. It was actually really hard to pick out which one I actually wanted to buy, but it was overall really fun,” recalled Junior Bailey Ham.
“I think the plant sale was successful based on what we had to work with,” mentioned Senior Allison Johnson.
FFA members who worked at the plant sales enjoyed the opportunity to work with their fellow classmates to sell the product of their toil.
“I had the most fun planning the sale from scratch and working with my classmates to create a fundraiser,” remembered Johnson.
Russell also enjoyed the social aspect of the event.
“I wish it went on longer, because it was just a fun thing to do and time went by fast. One of the best parts is just hanging out with your classmates outside of the classroom and just talking.”
Russell mentioned the effort that went into the production of the sale.
“I feel that we put a decent amount of effort in it, because we had to grow the plants, we had to maintain them, we had to move them out to the shade house. It was really a full class effort. We all put in a lot of work for them. And when it came time to actually sell the plants, we put in a good amount of effort there too. Making sure everything was ready, coming early and really helping our customers.”
The Agriscience Fair was also an aspect of the plant sale that students enjoyed.
“I think the agriscience fair went really well, it was a super cool experience to actually try and get to do an agriscience project I haven’t done like a science fair project since I was in 6th grade. It was definitely an experience and a new one at that. Just getting to work through all those different steps of going through this project , it was very informational, and it taught me just a lot overall about not only the scientific method and how to go about experiments but the agricultural industry and that education was super valuable in furthering my education in my other ag classes and just all the other things I do,” said Ham.
For those who wished to purchase plants, but were unable to attend, the Horticulture class will be selling plants before the FFA End-of-the-Year Celebration on May 27, from 5 to 6 p.m. in the quad.
