Campus Tour and more! - by Brian Wathen

A photo from a local Mennonite producers’ high tunnel. I was amazed at the mere size of the tomatoes that he was growing. Most of his tomatoes were suffering from disease as well.

More than halfway through my internship with the University of Maryland Extension and I am enjoying every second of it. I’ve helped my mentor with things around the office and with the trials, I’ve gone out on my own to farms to take soil samples and went to the Loveville Produce Auction to set up a taste test survey. We wanted some feedback on the heirloom tomato varieties that we harvested for our greenhouse. I even got to work with a drone to take some pictures of our watermelon fields to look at coverage of the vines for our graphed watermelon trial. I am very excited to be joining the Charles County 4-H group as we head up to the Western Maryland 4-H Educational and Camping Center for overnight camp. I was not able to attend my last year of 4-H due to Covid and it has been two years since we last held camp. I am instructing the fishing class as well as helping our 4-H leaders in any way I can. We have a lot more work to do and have other tasks planned and I am more than ready to jump in.

The highlight of our campus tour for me was getting a feel of the campus. I would like to attend UMD to continue my education if I get accepted but also have other options as well. I visited the University of Tennessee as well to get a feel of their school of Agriculture. I feel like I got more out of our campus tour versus touring the whole campus as a first-year student at both schools. I got to ask some of the other interns who are already going to UMD some basic questions not only about the school in general but about the Agricultural school as well. I mainly want to go to Maryland not only because it’s close to home, but I feel like that most of my experience has been through the school of AGNR and UMD. Everything from 4-H, Livestock Judging, Livestock Skillathon and even this internship, so I feel I have a stronger network with UMD. 

I am as always keeping an open mind and trying to think on my feet when there is a problem or I have a question about a particular task. I am looking forward to the rest of my internship and what is left to come.

I went to the Loveville Produce auction and set up a table for a tomato taste test. These 6 varieties are harvested from our high tunnel heirloom trial. We printed out a survey as well so we could get some feedback on taste and appearance.

A picture I took of our high tunnel at a bird’s eye view. I was setting up a drone to take pictures to tell us canopy coverage of watermelon vines from our graphed watermelon trial. More photos to come soon!