While some students were happy to spend their summer vacation away from the locker-lined halls of Littlestown Senior High School, the members of the student leadership organization, the FFA, were in the school's greenhouse planting poinsettias.
Members of the organization began growing the plants during the first week of August for the fruit and poinsettia fundraiser they hold in December. The process began almost a month before school started so that the plants would have more time to grow before the holidays.
The extra time ensures that the quality of the student-grown poinsettias will be comparable to the ones raised by commercial growers, Jesse Brant, the horticulture teacher and FFA adviser, said.
"We planted a few plants the first day of school to see how they would compare to the poinsettias started earlier in the month and they were about half the size of the ones started earlier," Brant said.
Although the FFA members plant the poinsettias, the students in the horticulture class raise them.
"They had a lot of responsibility, but they're doing a really good job," Brant said.
The class' five students only lost two poinsettias out of the 800 they planted.
The school's students have been planting poinsettias since the greenhouse was built in the 1990s, this is Brant's ninth year teaching high schoolers how to grow the plants. While in class, the students were taught how to pinch, water and fertilize the plants.
This year, the class grew five different colored poinsettia plants: burgundy, ice punch, marble, red and white. Ice punch, a combination of pink and white, was the most popular color this holiday season, according to Brant.
Poinsettia's leaves are originally green in color. In order for the leaves to change - a process that takes about two months - the plant can only be exposed to a 12 hours of sunlight per day.
Of the 800 plants that were raised, 500 have already been sold to families who preordered their holiday poinsettias. The profits go to the FFA to help pay for student trips and college scholarships for FFA members.