Making It Grow Minutes

Our dear departed friend Extension agent Tony Melton grew up on the sandy soils of McBee. Although those soils grow great peaches, they did not produce plentiful crops. Tony said Christmas was special for his family but, with eight children, presents were minimal.

The holiday decorations at Colonial Williamsburg are knock your socks off beautiful, but not historically accurate. Christmas decorations weren’t a big deal during those early times and citrus and pineapples would have been prohibitively expensive.

Christmas morning was a magical time for the three McNulty kids who lived on Woodleigh Road in Columbia.

At the South Carolina Botanical Garden, the goal is not just to offer visitors a rich experience in seeing a wide panoply of native and introduced plants that grow in three hundred acres which duplicate ecosystems from across the state, but they also preserve and protect endangered plants.

Recently we filmed a segment about so called carnivorous plants with Trent Miller, manager of the Natural Heritage Gardens at the South Carolina Botanical Gardens at Clemson.

Recently, we went to the South Carolina Botanical Garden to film their newest project – the Birding Garden. The people who take up birding are dedicated and persistent, the garden staff noticed that every morning binocular-laden folks were gathering in a particular place below the Visitor’s Center, scanning the tree line for views of year-round or migratory avians.

Our small state has wildly divergent plant communities and the Botanical Garden’s topography and soil types allows many of these to be replicated. At the garden, experts in ecology, conservation, botany, woody and herbaceous plants teach core classes.

The South Carolina Botanical Garden is on the Clemson campus but since 1992 has been designated as the State Botanical Garden.

Bitter sneezeweed is a wide spread native plant — and staying with sneezing, there are lots of ideas about that.

Bitter sneezeweed was used as a type of dry snuff by some native populations to induce sneezing to drive out evil spirits or help clear head colds.

The side of the road flowers are making me pay more attention to soil types as I drive from St. Matthews to Sumter.

If you want a wildflower area in a place you can’t water, some of these sneezeweed cultivars would be perfect to use.

Like Rodney Dangerfield, some wildflowers can’t get a break.

Some native Crotalarias are the original larval food source for the ornate bella moth.

Amanda McNulty discusses crotalaria spectabilis, a yellow flower commonly known as rattlebox.

Black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta, are native biennial or perennial wildflowers with many cultivars grown by gardeners.

This summer it has been dominated by yellow flowers.

What are your "must haves" for tomato sandwiches?

Amanda McNulty shares her experiences making bacon mayo.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. In the winter time, cooking a frozen pizza is my easy go to supper. We have a gas stove, which adds heat to the kitchen, so I never turn it on in summer if I can help it. Hot weather suppers revolve around vegetable sandwiches, cucumber or tomato. White bread, peeled sliced cukes or maters, lots of mayonnaise. There’re lots of discussions about what kind of mayonnaise, all made more complicated by other concoctions similar looking to that white stuff in a jar, wildly different tastes. Most people I ask say they use what their momma’s used -- my mother didn’t even put mayonnaise in the refrigerator, maybe the acidity in the tomatoes saved us from potential food poisoning. Now I see recipes calling for – get ready for this --bacon mayonnaise. More on that to come.