Samuel Denherder

 

Hi, my name is Sam Denherder, I am 19 years old and currently live in Church Hill MD. I have just graduated from Chesapeake College with my Associates degree and plan on going to Salisbury next year to get my Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science. My goals are to stay involved with my passion for working with plants and animals. To extend my knowledge on different fields of Agriculture. And to find future career options that revolve around Agriculture and/or Environmental Science that I can go into after and during college.

I have been aware of the University of Maryland Extension for some time now mainly because of high school Agriculture classes at Queens Anne’s high school and from college field trips to the Research Centers. That is what led me to pursue this internship and further my experience and knowledge in Extension. My internship is under Dr. Kurt Vollmer and Dr. Dwayne Joseph and usually located at the Wye Research and Education Center on the Eastern Shore. I will also sometimes travel to the Upper Marlboro Research and Education Center as well as the Kent County office with Dr. Dwayne Joseph. This summer I will be mainly helping with setting up, managing, spraying, and collecting and assembling data for various weed management trials throughout these locations. I will also be learning the proper technique and protocols to setting up and carrying out these different trials.

In this picture, me, two other interns, and Dr. Vollmer were flagging and marking out a weed management soybean field trial at the Wye Research and Education Center to show the alleys and the actual trial plots on the field. This field trial is to test what mixtures of pesticides and which pesticides are best and most efficient for soybean farmers to use on their fields.

This past week, the interns and Dr Vollmer were planting two watermelon weed management trials at the Wye REC with the help of the farming staff. We used the water wheel behind the tractor to plant all 1200 watermelon plants on these trial fields. One of the trials was to see how a cover crop affected the watermelon growth and weed growth. The other trial was to test the affect residual pesticides have on different specialty crops like watermelon to hopefully shorten the rotation period for these specialty crops.

This is an ATV sprayer that me, Dr. Vollmer, and the other two interns use at the Wye Research and Education Center to spray the plots. We were calibrating the sprayers to spray the correct gallons per acre before we filled up the cans properly and sprayed the field.