Growing, going, gone: Othello FFA sells out of plants
CHERYL SCHWEIZER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 9 months AGO
Volunteers helped customers pick out plants during the Othello High School FFA plant sale.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
A volunteer helper hands a hanging basket to a customer during the Othello High School FFA plant sale April 30. The plant sale was originally scheduled for three days but sold out in less than six hours.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Lush hanging baskets were among the flowers for sale at the annual Othello High School FFA plant sale. The sale, originally scheduled for three days, sold out in about six hours.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columiba Basin Herald
The plant sale at Othello High School was such a success it sold out in about six hours. The sale is sponsored by the OHS FFA chapter.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Volunteers helped customers pick out plants during the Othello High School FFA plant sale.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
The Othello High School FFA plant sale was supposed to last three days, but sold out less than one.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Shoppers filled their carts at the annual Othello High School plant sale.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
Senior Reporter Cheryl Schweizer is a journalist with more than 30 years of experience serving small communities in the Pacific Northwest. She began her post-high-school education at Treasure Valley Community College and enerned her journalism degree at Oregon State University. After working for multiple publications, she has settled down at the Columbia Basin Herald and has been a staple of the newsroom for more than a decade. Schweizer’s dedication to her communities and profession has earned her the nickname “The Baroness of Bylines.” She covers a variety of beats including health, business and various municipalities. | May 4, 2020 11:40 PM
OTHELLO — The plant sale sponsored by the Othello High School FFA chapter was supposed to last three days. It’s the third year FFA members have grown flowers for sale, and adviser Kris DeTrolio said the first two went the distance. The first two years there were even a few plants left.
But 2020 has been different in a lot of ways. The greenhouse was ready Thursday morning, just as usual, stuffed with petunias, ornamental grasses and hanging baskets, among other options. The sale, however, didn’t last until Saturday, selling out by Thursday afternoon.
“By 2, 2:30 (p.m.) there was very little left,” DeTrolio said.
Customers were waiting when the greenhouse opened. There were restrictions in place - part of the effort to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, which, among many other things, forced school buildings to close and required students to shift to online instruction.
And the closure messed up the whole schedule for the greenhouse. Students had managed to finish most of the planting.
“The kids did most of the work,” DeTrolio said.
About 200 plants arrived on the day school closed, and horticulture class students and FFA members stayed after school to do the planting.
“From then on, it was me,” DeTrolio said.
She was in charge of watering, weeding, fertilizing and all the other work required in a greenhouse. Some of the hanging baskets and ornamental pots still needed to be filled, and DeTrolio turned it into a class assignment.
She made a video detailing the choices available and asked the students to determine which plants were the most compatible with each other. Students also had to decide which color combinations would work best.
“Then I had them give me ideas of which plants to pot,” she said.
But the students were barred from campus, so they never got back in the greenhouse.
“I was just sad they couldn’t see it all,” she said.
It was even more regrettable because 2020 was the best year yet, she said.
The project was revived in 2018 and mostly sold out. At least in terms of the plants, 2019 was a different story, and she was dissatisfied with the results. DeTrolio said she determined the problem was caused by poor quality soil.
She turned to the ag department’s advisory board, a group of industry volunteers, for help.
“They just came up with a recipe for us to follow,” DeTrolio said.
She credited Kirk Junkers of First Line Seed, Moses Lake, with being especially helpful.
She held an appointment-only sale April 29 for people at higher risk of complications from the outbreak. But there were still plenty of plants when the door opened April 30.
The sale went off without any problems, even with restrictions in place.
“Everybody was so very patient and so very kind to each other,” DeTrolio said. This year there was more advance publicity for the sale, and DeTrolio attributed some of the response to “people just wanting to get outside and do something.” But it was also a demonstration of support for OHS students.
The money raised is used to support FFA and OHS ag department activities.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.
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