Abi Anderson

Hello! My name is Abi Anderson. I will be interning at the Anne Arundel County

Extension office working under Dave Myers on the Anne Arundel Urban Farming Research

Clinic. I am a rising junior at Salisbury University and I major in Environmental Biology, with a

minor in Art. I have not decided on a specific career to pursue yet, but I am interested in

entering the plant biology field. Through my major, I have been interested in learning more

about the evolution and genetics of plants and animals. With my minor, I hope to focus on my

studies on the Graphic Design program. With my education in the art department I hope to grow

and foster my artistic skills in college, and throughout my lifetime. Through this internship

opportunity I hope to grow my professionalism, especially with writing emails. I would also like to

learn how to work in an office setting, and how to collaborate and communicate with coworkers.

On my first day of work, my mentor and his colleague gave me a tour of the progress of

the Urban Farming Research Clinic. The size of the land sits right under 1 acre, but prides itself

on fitting a large diversity of fruits and vegetables in the small space. The urban farm is growing

three varieties of corn, apples, peaches, and pumpkins, and on the land is a high tunnel that

covers tomatoes, jalapeños, eggplant, and a variety of herbs. Unfortunately, some of the tomato

and pepper plants in the high tunnel were affected by a disease my mentor told me was called

phytophthora, which can cause root rot and decay of the stems of the plants. Because these

plants needed to be replaced, we headed to a local garden center to find some replacements.

When I was reading the labels of some possible replacement plants I saw that the peppers were

bred to be immune to a specific strand of virus that affected plants. Although it was not again

this pathogen that our past plants had succumbed to, I personally thought it was an interesting

discovery.

Fig 1. Picture of me and my mentor, Dave Myers, on my first day, removing weeds from around

the plants in the high tunnel. In between us is our office mascot and supervisor for the day,

Bear. She is Dave’s dog who occasionally comes out with us to the field. This tunnel is a part of

the Urban Farming Research Clinic that I will be helping my mentor maintain throughout the

summer.

On my second day, my mentor and I went to the Clarksville Facility of the Central

Maryland Research and Education Center. There, my mentor met up with a colleague to build a

substrate sterilizer for their upcoming mushroom research project. My mentor explained to me

that he had gotten comments from many people over the years about growing mushrooms. He

saw how much people were interested in learning more about them, and possibly how to grow

them themselves, so he decided to take up this project to help inform those who would like to

learn! I believe this project will be a new additional to the Urban Farming Research Clinic

project. After we had correctly built the sterilizer barrel, we were given a tour of the dairy farm

facilities on the land. Seeing the dairy farm, I was so amazed how much space and work is

needed to just feed the cows! This experience put into perspective how much thought is put into

agricultural research and development.

Fig 2. At the end of my first week, my mentor and I headed to the Urban Farming Research

Clinic and tilled the soil in preparation to plant pumpkin seeds. It was my first time ever using a

roto-tiller, and it was much more difficult than it looked!

Overall, I think I had a very successful first week. I’ve been enjoying spending time

outside and getting to be familiar with the land of the Urban Farming Research Clinic. I hope to

learn much more about agriculture from my mentor and my other colleagues at the Anne

Arundel office in the coming weeks. I can’t wait to see what the summer brings!