By NICOLE LOGGINS/Staff Writer

COLUMBIANA — The Shelby County School of Technology Agriscience Department is hosting its annual spring plant sale.

Agriscience teacher Phillip Riggsby said the school has vegetables, bedding plants and various other foliage and the sale will continue until all the plants have been sold.

“We grow most of our plants from plugs but we also use seeds,” Riggsby said.

Riggsby said the plant sale has been an annual event for more than nine years.

The plant sale funds itself each year. Riggsby’s 15 students raise enough money to prepare for the next year’s sale, buy tools and go on a few field trips during the year.

“We do it not to make money but to benefit the community and to be seen in the community,” Riggsby said.

Riggsby said the students learn a lot from the Agriscience program because it is predominately hands-on learning.

“We encourage (the students) to go to college but we know that’s not going to happen for every one of them,” he said. “So we try to train them for the workplace, we really push to develop a good work ethic at this school. We try to teach them all they’ll need to be successful in this industry.”

Riggsby said some of the department’s best sellers are geranium baskets and tomato plants.