Above, Clinton County High School Agriculture Teacher Ben Prewitt instructed students on identifying plants that were dead versus the ones that might survive. Below, students worked on replanting the plants in fresh soil if it had been determined that the plants had a chance to live. Prewitt said the cold snap that came through last week caused damage to many of the smaller plants in the greenhouse.

Students at Clinton County High School worked hard Monday in an effort to salvage plants that were hit by the weekend’s cold weather snap.

According to FFA Sponsor and Horticulture teacher Ben Prewitt, the greenhouse took a big hit this past weekend.

“I don’t know what happened,” Prewitt said. “I don’t know if the heat didn’t come on or what, but when I got here Sunday, most of the smaller plants were frozen.”

On Monday, Prewitt had his students going through most of the smaller plants that were in the greenhouse, cutting away the dead parts of the plants in hopes that they may come back.

“What they are doing is trying to salvage any types of plants that they can,” Prewitt said. “Due to the lack of funding we have in the greenhouse account, as far as buying more plants, that’s not really an option. That’s why we are trying to salvage some of the ones that we’ve lost.”

Prewitt agreed that this setback was a double edged sword in that it was bad to loose the plants, however, it opened up the opportunity to teach the students what they need to do when something like this happens in the real world.

“It’s important in any business whether its greenhouse or in agriculture, you’re always going to have some setbacks. I think it’s important to show them there is a chance they could come out of it. Not everything is all perfect in this field.”

In the upcoming months, the greenhouse will be making a push to sell the flowers, with the first of the big holidays for the students being Mother’s Day.

“Today (Monday) was supposed to be the grand opening, but due to this cold weather, I’m going to push it back about a week or so,” Prewitt said. “As far as hanging baskets, they are more than ready right now. I would encourage people to probably wait a few days until some of this cold weather gets out of here before we really start putting stuff out.”

Prewitt said about a week before Mother’s Day activity around the CCHS greenhouse gets really busy for his students.

The projects that are done in the greenhouse and through the Agriculture classes are used to help raise money for the local Future Farmers of America Chapter at Clinton County High School.

The FFA uses the sales of the plants as their major fund-raiser for the year.