Students turn their school’s flower farm into a Tihar business

While most schools remain quiet during the Tihar holiday, students and teachers at Janata Krishna Secondary School in Pakle, Sandhikharka Municipality-8, are busy harvesting and selling marigolds. The school’s flower farm has become a destination for traders and customers from Sandhikharka looking to buy flowers for the festival. Students and teachers spend much of the day picking and selling the blooms.

On Monday alone, they sold 150 kilograms of flowers, said Prakash Bhusal, the school’s assistant headteacher. Eight students and five teachers worked throughout the day to harvest and sell the flowers. The school has cultivated marigolds on more than 1,017 square metres of land specifically for the Tihar market.

The flowers are selling at Rs300 per kilogram, and the school has earned around Rs100,000 so far, Bhusal said. The flower farm is largely the work of students studying crop science in grades 9 to 12. Around 60 students enrolled in the subject took part in cultivation, from planting and weeding to irrigation, fertilisation, and protecting plants from pests and diseases.