Temperatures on the John de la Howe campus have been chilly this January with even a couple dustings of snow, but it’s nice and toasty inside the school’s new state-of-the art greenhouse.
Students in Mrs. Kaitlyn Rhodes’s horticulture classes have begun growing plants in preparation for the traditional plant sale later this spring. The 34-by-75-foot greenhouse is a stunning new laboratory where our Aggies can exercise their green thumbs with the latest technology.
“This greenhouse is equipped with lots of different things,” Mrs. Rhodes said. “We have an automatic shade cloth as well as automatic watering systems and automatic heat control. Anything can be done by the touch of a phone, so it makes it super easy for me to work from home as well as work from here.”
With three shipments of infant plants in the past month and more the way, the variety of plants now growing in the new greenhouse will make for a fine selection at this year’s sale and for use in other campus activities. As the plants arrived, industrious horticulture students transferred the plants from their seed nettings into pots and began the careful process of nurturing them daily.
“The new greenhouse is really different from our older greenhouse, and I’m really happy with what we’re seeing,” said senior horticulture student Blake Arias. “We’re really excited about it because in the older greenhouse, one of our biggest challenges was irrigation. Here, with the automatic watering system, we don’t have to worry about that as much.”
On a recent chilly day, with the temperature outside barely above 40 degrees, Blake marveled that “it keeps us warm. It’s like 80 degrees in here right now, so it’s doing its job.”
Among the plant varieties taking root in the bright new greenhouse space are florals, perennials and fruits and vegetables – plants with colorful names such as Blue Angel Hosta, Creeping Sedum and Blue Hawaii Colocasia. Some strawberry plants are even in the mix this year.
“The majority of our plants that we sell here are bedding plants, so they’re used for landscaping,” said Savannah Smith, one of our hardworking student horticulturalists. “Most people will buy them here, take them home and plant them in their yards and gardens to make their homes look pretty.”
The annual Spring Plant Sale is scheduled for March 27-29.
This innovative greenhouse was made possible in part by a generous grant from AgFirst Farm Credit Bank, and it will be exciting to see how all the bells-and-whistles impact the horticulture program in the months and years to come.
