Sam Denherder

This internship has been extremely helpful in making me figure out my best work strategies and best work practices to be successful. I have had other jobs in the past, but not really any that have been this formal or as much of a resemblance to full time career path jobs. The difference in the job I am working has made me learn new strategies and habits to allow me to be successful. Throughout the past month I have had to be more formal, more committed, and be smarter with my actions than most other jobs I have had. Since this job is very close to the career I want to go into, I care about how it goes, what I learn, and what connections I make for the future. Because of this, being presentable, formal, kind, and helpful are necessary. I have enjoyed this new work environment and actually prefer it to the other jobs I have had; the workforce development aspect makes it easier and clearer when completing tasks and especially when learning about the different jobs. I have learned that no matter where you are or who you are with, you don't know where they will lead you. Because of this, always being respectful, formal, and easy to talk to will indefinitely help you in the future.

This past week of the internship has been EXTREMELY hot, but luckily for Dr. Vollmers other interns and I, there is a lot of online computers work to be done for this year and from last year. To help with the heat, we have been starting work earlier to get all of the outside rating and maintenance done before it gets too extremely hot and sunny. There is still a lot of ratings being done for all the trials, from the multiple Watermelon trials to all of the soybean trials, to an oat trial as well. I feel I am a lot better at rating now than in the beginning of the internship. Dr. Vollmer isn't at the WREC this week, so the maintenance and ratings are our job. The interns and I were talking and felt like the ratings we have been giving were all very accurate and consistent throughout the trials. I feel like we have gotten into a very efficient routine for rating. The other main thing we are working on this week is compiling all of the data from Dr. Vollmers Weed Management Trials from 2023. Having all of the data and trials in one book makes it super easy to go through and compare. This book takes a while to compile together, but I feel like we are handling it very well.

This shows the Watermelon cover crop trial Dr. Vollmer is doing, the cover crop used is Oats, and we are using it as a dead mulch in-between the plastic watermelon rows. These oats just got rolled and terminated last week and are already showing good results at suppressing weeds.

In this picture, the interns and I are weighing oat biomass from an oat trial at the Wye REC. This oat trial is to test the difference between oats drilled with a planter vs oat that were broadcast seeded by a drone. We are weighing dried oats from each plot in each trial which we harvested a couple weeks ago.

In this picture, me and 2 other interns are helping Dr. Andrew plant his Ginger root plants for his trial. We planted all 90 Ginger plants in 40 planter bags with well-draining substrate.