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Keeping That Yard Under Control

Making It Grow Minute
SC Public Radio

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. My two- and-a half acre yard is getting to be more than I can handle. When we moved here, thirty-three years ago, most of it was an old field, with just two large beds of camellias and an island of pines. We hired someone to bush hog it several times each summer and had just a small area to cut with a push mower. With youthful enthusiasm, I changed that by planting beds of assorted shrubs and trees, large and small. Those now mature clumps of woody plants are perfect places for the birds to drop the seeds of vines and trash trees. I’ve been spending several hours a week crawling around with a paint brush, a labeled herbicide, clippers, a small electric saw and cutting these unwanted specimens off at the base and painting the stumps with the herbicide.

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Amanda McNulty is a Clemson University Extension Horticulture agent and the host of South Carolina ETV’s Making It Grow! gardening program. She studied horticulture at Clemson University as a non-traditional student. “I’m so fortunate that my early attempts at getting a degree got side tracked as I’m a lot better at getting dirty in the garden than practicing diplomacy!” McNulty also studied at South Carolina State University and earned a graduate degree in teaching there.