The Botany and special education classes prepared for their annual heirloom plant sale. After skipping last year’s sale due to COVID-19, the classes are back in the greenhouse busily preparing for this year’s sale.

“It’s daily work, we’re in here every day, watering, planting and transplanting. Probably a week and a half’s worth of work in the past month, and now that it’s getting warmer we might be in here twice a day watering,” Special Education teacher Noel Simon said.

Both the Botany and special education classes are involved in preparing for the sale, the proceeds of which help fund the greenhouse, and botany class.

“It’s a lot of work. We’ve got to water the plants every day. Luckily we have help with that, and then we also have to transplant the plants once they get too big for the smaller pots,” sophomore Robert Frank said.

The students have a variety of tasks they need to complete to be ready for the plant sale, including planting the seeds, daily watering, preparing the pots, transplanting the plants and labelling them for sale. 

“Planting the seeds is the hardest part because you don’t know if they’re going to come up so you have to make sure you do it right so they actually will, otherwise you’re just wasting your time. Also, there’s lots of seeds that are super super small, and hard to plant,” Frank said.

In addition to the usual varieties of tomatoes and peppers, new herbs and houseplants were added.

“We have our standard tomatoes and stuff but we threw a couple new herbs in, and the jade plants are brand new if people want houseplants for over the winter,” Botany & Horticulture teacher Pat Arndt said.

The sale is planned for May 20-21 but the date may be subject to change.