Planning Greenhouse Sales and Land Lab
Description
When you have a greenhouse on campus, there are endless amounts of fundraisers that can help students to apply the knowledge they have learned in class. Examples of different sales could be vegetable transplants, strawberries in a hoophouse or floral sales. The key part of these sales is planning when you want the crop to be ready for harvest to be sold. Planting schedules are a big part of how you plan your sales and can make them successful. To start your floral sale, you can contact a major greenhouse within Michigan to buy your plugs to kickstart getting items ready to sell to members of your community. Land labs can also be a key way to raise funds for the chapter. This combines production agriculture with the high school FFA program. A key player within this program is getting alumni members active to help plant and monitor the crops. Land labs usually plant major commodities like corn, soybeans and wheat. Students are present at harvest to observe the machinery used and help in handling the crops. Consider using the Greenhouse Crop Production CDE as a resource for the sales you plan.
Resources
- Example of FFA plant sale:
- Why grow in a greenhouse? (Johnny's Select Seeds)
- Seed-Starting Date Calculator (Johnny's Select Seeds)
- Vegetable Planing Schedules by Zone or State (Urban Farmer)
- Year-Round Greenhouse Planting Calendar (CERES Greenhouse Solutions)
- Greenhouse Strawberry Resources (UMass Extension)
- Bangor Greenhouse Manual
- FFA Alumni/Farmers within the community
- Major Greenhouse Producers: Red Barn Greenhouse, Bonnie Plants
- Land Lab Example: Washington FFA Land Lab Video
- Greenhouse Crop Production CDE (MI FFA)
Teaching Methods
Brainstorming, Lecture Discussion, Demonstration, Field Trip, Resource People, Experiment, Supervised Study