MARYLAND SOD PRODUCER RISES TO THE CHALLENGE FOR MYSTERIOUS LATE-NIGHT SOD DELIVERY
By Casey Reynolds, PhD
Anyone who has been involved in farming knows that it is not an 8 to 5 job. Perhaps farmers are born with it, perhaps they acquire it over years of experience, or maybe it’s a combination of both. Regardless of where it comes from, farmers just know how to adapt and answer the call. Te call that came this time was at Middleton Manor Sod Farm in Waldorf, Maryland, and it came at 9:00 pm on the evening of April 4, 2024.
On the other end of the line were representatives from the Maryland Department of Agriculture who were looking for three pallets of fresh sod, and they needed it soon. How soon? By 6:00 am the next morning, Friday, April 5. Where’s it going? Tey weren’t at liberty to share that just yet. However, neither the lateness of the call, nor the secrecy around where it was going, deterred Jonathan Middleton and his team from rising to the challenge.
The “Key” Issue In order to fully set the stage for this story, we first need to back up to the previous week. On March 26, 2024, the Francis Scott Key Bridge was struck by the container ship Dali, collapsing the bridge into the Patapsco River. As you may recall, it was the leading story on local and national news outlets for many days. Maryland Governor Wes Moore called the event a “global crisis” that has affected more than 8,000 jobs and has an economic impact of over $15 million per day.
Maryland’s largest commercial industry is Agriculture. Te state’s farmers contribute more than $8 billion annually to the state’s economy and employ nearly 350,000 Marylanders. Like many other states, sod growers in Maryland are not just growing sod. Te majority of growers in Maryland are rotating their sod crops with potatoes, watermelons, grains, and plenty of soybeans. Just last year, the Port of Baltimore exported $243 million worth of soybeans alone. Needless to say, the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse is a tragic incident that will have local and global impacts for the foreseeable future, and the Maryland Agriculture Industry may feel it as much as anyone.
The Story Unfolds It's no surprise then that the Maryland Department of Agriculture has a vested interest in getting the port re- opened. About a week after the bridge collapse, Kevin
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Atticks, Maryland’s Secretary of Agriculture, got a call from the Governor’s office asking him to be at a specific address near the bridge collapse site by 6:00 am on Tursday, April 4.
He didn’t know much about it at the time, but as it turned out, this was going to be the staging ground for a press conference the following day where President Joe Biden was set to deliver a speech addressing the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse and re-opening of the Port of Baltimore.
Te press conference would be held in Dundalk, MD, overlooking the crash site, and crews setting up the site were tasked with creating an environment that not only was aesthetically pleasing, but also safe for the press corps and government officials attending the President’s address to the nation.
After surveying the site on Tursday morning, Kevin and his team immediately realized it needed a lot of preparation. Several days of rain, with a total of over three inches, had created quite a mess at the site. Tey pumped out as much water as possible but still needed to bring in mulch and soil to dry up the site in order for it to be suitable for a press conference.
The Dilemma Last, but not least of course, the site needed to be green, and fresh-cut sod was the answer. Te Maryland Department of General Services continued to prepare the site and brought in sod late Tursday night. Unfortunately, in this case, the sod that was brought in on Tursday night had been sitting around for several days, and by the time the crews started laying the sod out it was obvious there was a serious problem.
At this point, Kevin and his team in the Maryland Department of Agriculture were tasked with seeing just how deep their reach was within the Maryland Agricultural community. Te task was simple yet seemed impossible. Find three pallets of sod at 9:00 pm on Tursday evening and have it delivered by 6:00 am the next morning before the U.S. Secret Service closed the site for security reasons. Kevin reached out to Mike Calkins, the Assistant Secretary for Plant Industries and Plant Management, who administers the Maryland Certified Sod Program. Mike then reached out to Gordon Kretser, who is the turfgrass
TPI Turf News July/August 2024
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