The Ector County ISD Spring Plant Sale is on the way April 17-21.
The sale will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the ECISD Agriculture Farm at 7649 W. Dunn St. Horticulture Teacher Christina Butler said a lot of students helped with the sale.
Among the items on sale will be spider plants, geraniums, petunias, fuchsias and impatiens to name a few.
Butler said the sale teaches students customer service and business sense.
“They’re able to get their hands on the programming that comes along with it. We use QuickBooks and a lot of businesses use QuickBooks. They’re able to … figure out that programming and able to know how to work it for them. They leave and they’re able to go get a job somewhere,” Butler said.
She added that they work on the sale from mid-February all the way up until the sale.
“Before the plants come, though, there’s a lot of work that goes into prepping the greenhouse, (making) sure that plants are free of bugs, free of algae on the floor; things like that. After the poinsettia sale, we do a complete clean of our greenhouses,” Butler said.
The plants come as plugs or are propagated in the greenhouse.
Butler said the greenhouses at the Dunn Street location are “way better” than the ones off Grandview Avenue.
“Definitely more modern; it’s still lacking a few things that we could use. … Our water is so hard out here so we’re looking into getting a water softener. … There’s a few things like that that we just didn’t think about at the time and now we’re having to kind of back trace and think about, but we’re making it happen,” Butler said.
Proceeds from the sale go back into the horticulture program so they can keep doing it for the community and the students can keep learning.
Students volunteer in the summer and earn volunteer hours, especially the FFA officers.
‘They’ll help clean up the greenhouses or clean up the shop in here. We’ll go do stuff out in the community as well,” she said.
If they have leftover poinsettias in the winter, they will donate them to nursing homes. They have also replanted at the 18+ Transition Learning Center.
“We do a variety of planting, mainly in the summer, so we get our FFA officers to help with that,” Butler said.
Averi Wagner, a 17-year-old junior, Tania Aguirre, an 18-year-old senior, and Madisan Whitlock, a 16-year-old junior, all at Odessa High School, are looking forward to the sale.
“I’m excited,” said Wagner, who had been in animal science. “… Switching from the animals to the plants, really people don’t respect plants as much as they should so I think it’s cool to learn actual plant life and be able to see different views.”
Whitlock said she likes the continuity of planting a bunch at once and continuing it the next day.
Aguirre said she likes that everyone comes together to help and how the community sees the results.
