University of Maryland Extension has been a great experience. I have learned a lot from both of my mentors on weed management and vegetable production. I also have learned what all goes into the University of Maryland Extension. There have been a few times where I had to step out of my comfort zone and challenge myself with the college tour and MACAA tour but I know I am strong and I got through it. I know I always try my best with everything I do and I know I am a hard worker. I enjoyed this internship experience but I realized that I want to stay in agriculture but go on the animal side of it and change my major to equine animal science bachelor degree to become an animal nutritionist.
Monday, I went with Veronica to Saint Mary's County to
Zimmerman Produce Farm to collect insect sticky cards in watermelon, sweet
corn, sunflowers, peppers, and pumpkins to see what kind of natural enemies are
there on the farm to be on a look out for. In the afternoon, Interns had their
weekly zoom connection with guest speaker Joseph Cho, a 4-H program leader.
Tuesday, I helped Kurt at the Wye
Research farm in the morning, we did weed counts and counting rye grass in each
soybean plot. Collected flags in that soybean field. Captured some drone pictures
of that field. Then, we rated a soybean trial to see how the herbicides being used
is working on the weeds. Plugged in data on the ARM website from the weed
counts and rye grass counts this morning. In the afternoon, I worked on my
final presentation and some more computer work for the internship.
Wednesday was a very long day, I met
Veronica at a greenhouse nursery in Sudlersville to collect some thrips from plant
cuttings and plants and she transported them to the Wye Research Farm, where we
released them around her tomato trial to hopefully encourage the thrips to move
into her tomato plants for her research. I also helped her take off the old sticky
card insect traps and replace each plot with two new sticky cards to see how
many flea hoppers and thrips she gets. In the afternoon, I helped her get all her
insect packets organized and stapled for her talk at the Saint Mary Zimmerman Produce Farm
twilight tour in the evening. Then, me, Veronica, and Kurt travelled to Saint
Mary for their evening twilight tour.
Thursday, I attended the Commodity
Classic at the Queen Anne’s County 4-H park. First thing in the morning, listened
to three talks, one was grid sampling for variable rate application from Jarrod
Miller, second one was yield response to in-furrow biologicals from James Adkins,
and the last one was on-farm trial results from Nicole Fiorellino. Then, I walked
around and checked out all the commercial and agency exhibits. After that, I
listened to the business meeting, and to finish the day off, there was a crab feast
and pork and chicken BBQ dinner.
Friday was a short day for me, I
helped Kurt in the morning, rating a soybean trial, we are seeing if the
herbicides sprayed is doing what it is supposed to and seeing what new weeds
have come up. Then, we went back to the office and identified two weeds using a
weed identification website, just so we can see how the website works. After
that, I plugged in some of the soybean ratings into the ARM data. Then, went
and identified some more weeds using two weed identification websites. I went
out to the farm and helped Veronica clean up all the pesticide equipment’s used
when she was spraying her tomato trial for the flea hoppers and thrips.
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| Commodity classic book to follow along with the day. |
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| Soybean rating, rating the weeds and seeing how the different herbicides are working. |
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