"I let the kids pick which vegetables to plant, and they picked spinach and carrots," Pertusati said. "Go figure." 

They also chose to plant chives, tomatoes and chili peppers. 

"Basically, what we have here is salsa," Pertusati said. 

But students get more out of this deskless class than a popular condiment: They get lessons in science, economics, accounting and sociology. 

Pertusati, a social studies teacher and former landscape contractor, runs the Agricultural Nursery Program at Valley View High School, a continuation school in the Chaffey Joint Union District. Started more than a year ago with students installing 5,000 feet of pipe for a drip irrigation system, the program had sold $12,000 worth of plants by June. 

That's where the economic and accounting lessons were learned. 

"You see a little light go on in their head," Pertusati said of his students. "They look at the plants and think of them being $4.50 each. Then they count up the number of plants, and then it clicks in." 

The science lessons lie in using a hot house and, this semester, a green house to grow plants from seeds or clippings. Then there are the daily tasks of watering, weeding and fertilizing. 

"I did the spring session, and it was a lot of work," said Lisa Becker, 17, now a teacher's assistant for Pertusati. "The fertilizer part though is just nasty. É Today we put some white fertilizer on. I thought all fertilizer was brown." 

Students raise various ornamental plants in one- and five-gallon containers. The plants go to local nurseries, either for cash or trade. 

"I think (it's) a very good program," said Humberto Plascencia, owner of Nicole's Nursery in Ontario, which has a trade arrangement with the class. "The students learn the growing process, and they raise a lot of good-quality plants." 

The revenue raised in the last school year went back into the program, some of it financing more supplies. Another chunk went to funding summer jobs for students who did landscaping work at area school districts. 

The sociology lessons come via the teamwork concept which Pertusati drives home by dividing the 75 students into different groups. Each team has a job, and if someone doesn't feel like working, the others soon realize the result is more labor for them. 

"We get on each other if someone falls behind," said Victor Sarabia, 19. "Afterward you feel like you've accomplished something out here." 

Sarabia and Becker said they, like nearly all the students in the program, just want the credits. 

"There are some who come out here and think it's an easy way to get credits, and they stand around and don't do anything," Becker said. "Then they find out they don't get any credits." 

In the center of the students' garden is a pumpkin patch. With a healthy crop coming in, Pertusati's students now prepare to host a number of elementary school classes next month as Halloween nears. With goats and chickens brought in for the visits, each child is escorted by Pertusati's students to the patch and allowed to select a pumpkin. 

"When we did it last year my students didn't know how to interact with the children," Pertusati said. "By the end of it they were meeting them at the gate."