Making It Grow Minutes

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. George Ellison in his column “Why the blackgum tree has a hollow trunk," Asheville Citizen Times, lists how people used these pipe-like tree parts after heart rot fungus had rendered them hollow. Ellison describes how they were fashioned into rabbit traps (mostly caught possums), lined the upper reaches of wells, became...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Certain trees in the genus Nyssa are most often associated with wet areas, the generic name honors the Greek water nymph Nyssa. All their flowers, both male and female, are very attractive to bees. I found an article in the Asheville Citizens Times about one type, Nyssa sylvatica var. sylvatica, that grows in the Blue R...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Fontella Bass, our half-tamed chicken who sleeps in the dining room in a dog crate for safety is remarkably and somewhat irritatingly demanding. She makes a racket in the morning when she hears me come downstairs until I take her out on the back porch, open the crate door, and put food out for her. In the summer, she ke...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. I talked earlier about our much missed neighbors who had live-wire boys, the world’s best dog, and short-lived chickens with one exception, Fontella Bass who had been rescued from the jaws of death on numerous occasions, she’s named for the woman who recorded the song Rescue Me. When her former owners moved, they decide...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Our pet hen, Chickie Wimberly, was quite the enforcer. We had a half lab half bassett hound dog, Sally, take up with us who was a pain about getting under foot when we sat on the front porch; often to steal and hors d’oeuvre or, once, a piece of fried chicken out of daughter Lill’s hand. But Chickie Wimberly occasionall...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. We had a pet chicken years ago, first named Poinsett Cucumber as my son brought her home from school in a box with that name on it. His teacher had incubated eggs and as she was a cousin, she felt like she could send a biddy home without asking! The hen-to-be, renamed Chickie Wimberly, went everywhere with us. A note he...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. My neighbors for several years were a constant source of new experiences. A visit to Tractor Supply ended up with a movable chicken coop added to the trampolines, zip lines, and fire pit that kept adults and children entertained. We often baby sat for the world’s most perfect dog, Clovis (don’t tell them but we let him...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. First, they had two young boys who ran around barefooted most of the year and were interested in everything that was going on in their yard or ours, the grosser and gorier the better. Their parents grilled a great steak and mixed a mean Bloody Mary and had gizmos galore – one blows up a lawn mower tire and another steam...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. This is the best time of year to add new plants to your yard, make it a family affair to give a gift to nature over the holidays. Our native dogwoods, Cornus florida, have suffered from years of higher temperatures and lower rainfall as well as disease pressure. New varieties have resistance to diseases and if you plant...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. You deserve kudos if you consistently keep you backyard feeders filled with a variety of foods, and make sure that birds have a constant source of fresh water, especially during freezing weather. But our native wildlife existed here long before we did, taking advantage of natural sources of sustenance and drink. Mast is...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Riding up to Clemson recently, the sides of the highways were showing good fall color from the large hickories, tulip poplars, and maples. A smaller tree that was adding to the beauty was our native dogwood, Cornus florida with reddish burgundy leaves. Dogwoods are happiest at the edges of woodlands. In those settings,...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Since we now have cooler weather and can enjoy outdoor exercise more, I’m going to continue to talk about our rail to trail system in South Carolina. The most famous is the widely popular Swamp Rabbit Trail in Greenville, but in contrast there is one in a rural town filled with charm --the Ten Governors Rail Trail in Ed...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Dean Moss is the “unpaid” executive director of the Spanish Moss Trail in Beaufort. He spent the day with us recently as we filmed this incredible infrastructure treasure that is transforming life in Beaufort for many citizens. Beaufort is flat, the weather is generally pleasant, and bike riding would be delightful exce...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Making It Grow spent a lovely day in Beaufort recently learning about and filming portions of the Spanish Moss Trail. The Magnolia Rail Line began in the late 1800’s carrying freight for twenty miles to the Port of Port Royal. Both the port and railroad were decommissioned in the early 2000’s, the train right of way now...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. When I was a little girl, we would take pennies and put them on the railroad tracks in Saluda NC– then come back after the trains had roared through and try to find those flattened pieces of copper. For many people trains are magical – they have memories of riding the trains to camp, to college, or to visit family acros...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Railroads were the backbone of American growth but in recent years shipping by truck has supplanted their use. According to the rails to trails movement, by 1984 from 4000 to 8000 miles of track were being abandoned each year. This left corridors that went through neighbors, down busy city streets, and through miles and...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Chalk maple, Acer leucoderme, is a smaller maple native to the south east which has chalky white bark and is known for consistent good fall color. This is a smaller tree, about 25 feet tall, and is usually multi-trunked unless pruned to a central leader. The leaves tend to hang on in winter which can make for a shaggy a...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Trips to New England in the fall must be delightful – you get to wear a sweater in September, lobsters are plentiful and inexpensive, the woodlands are ablaze with color. The sugar maples that are native to that part of the word, Acer saccharum, not only give us maple syrup but reliably develop the red anthocyanin pigme...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The red maples that thrive in the flood plains of the Congaree and Wateree Rivers are actually more striking in January and February than in the fall of the year. Their flowers and fruits that follow, those seed containing samaras, are often bright red or sometimes a deep burgundy and they are the earliest trees to show...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Last week we got out the wool blankets, fortunately I haven’t seen any new holes since I packed them carefully with moth balls at the end of last winter. One of the delights of cooler temperatures besides snuggling under the cover is the colors that we see in nature. As I drive across the Congaree River floodplain, some...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. When we were little, we started walking barefooted up and down our long, gravel driveway in February so when warm days came, our feet would be tough enough to easily forego shoes when we were outside playing. My father had to catch a white butterfly in the spring before he could let his feet breath freely. What he proba...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. When my mother felt a little low in energy, she’d say, “I need some Lexington County tender greens, which are a type of mustard green. These come from Brassica juncea, a different species than the collards and kales, and originated in western or central Asia. In parts of the world, varying cultivars of mustard greens ar...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Early wild types of cabbages grew in the warmer parts of Western Europe, including the Channel Islands. One in particular, the Jersey cabbage or Long Jacks, grows up to ten feet tall! To cultivate a straight stem, growers would strip the leaves off as they matured and use them as nutritious food for livestock, giving ri...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Collards and kale are considered wild type members of the cabbage family. These species of the Brassica genus originated in the Mediterranean area, where they were eaten by the Romans and Greeks two thousand years ago. As the Roman Empire expanded, they were introduced into southwest Europe and even England. Cato the El...

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Tony Melton told us recently that the greens which were planted months ago are sitting in the field waiting for rain. Well, we’ve finally gotten that much needed heavenly precipitation, and from Tony's extensive knowledge, our South Carolina collards and kale should quickly rebound from their slow start. Staples of sout...