MOSES LAKE — Tyler Jungers and Rayni Koehn were discussing some of the challenges faced by the crew working the greenhouses at Moses Lake High School this winter –

Well, wait. Rayni had to answer a question about the hanging baskets.

Anyhow, Tyler said he’s learned about marketing through the greenhouse and the annual plant sale –

Well, wait. So many hanging baskets had been sold the display needed to be rearranged, and Tyler had to direct traffic.

The student managers are always busy. The plant sale always draws a big crowd.

Students in the horticulture class work all winter, with help from the FFA chapter, to grow not one but two greenhouses full of flowers and vegetable starts. It’s a tradition of such long standing nobody knows how long.

Money raised through the project pays for supplies for the following year. “It comes back to the greenhouse,” said Carly Munter, who’s in the class. It also supports FFA activities. Horticulture instructor and FFA co-advisor Tony Kern said the goal is to make about $10,000 more than the cost of funding the program. Some years the sale succeeds in hitting that goal, some years it doesn’t, he said.

Flowers and vegetable starts were flying out the door Friday morning. One customer remarked the most difficult part was figuring out which plants to buy.

The winter just past was a problem, Kern said. “This was a difficult, difficult year for us.” The greenhouses could handle the cold weather, he said, but the students lost about 10 days of class, mostly during the planting season. In addition, the seemingly perpetually cloudy skies slowed growth.

Plants got dry while school was closed, Rayni said, even though kids were coming to school to water them. “Now that the sun is finally out everything is starting to bloom,” and the growth explosion can bring its own problems.

“We’ve been in full scramble mode since Christmas break,” Kern said. Nevertheless the greenhouse produced for the plant sale, with both full to overflowing.

The 25 students in the horticulture class and some FFA members do most of the work, but “I bring out multiple other classes.” Between the growing season and the plant sale, “there are 150 kids that are playing a role,” he said.

Tyler said there is an art to producing an attractive hanging basket, and Carly explained it, using a basket she designed as an example. “I’m so proud of it.”

She used three anchor plants; MLHS students always use petunias for those, she said. Students choose one light-colored petunia and two dark ones, and two other non-petunias. “We line up the three (petunias) in the middle and then you put in the side pieces.” Selecting the colors requires some forethought, since they have to be colors that compliment each other.

Any flowers that aren’t sold, “and some that we’ve hidden away,” Carly said, will be planted in the downtown planter boxes, and used as decorations at MLHS graduation.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.