Making It Grow

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 kept me from sleeping late as I could hear her clucking and I felt guilty about making her stay in her crate after the sun was up.

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 decided to leave her in her by-then completely free-range state.

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 occasionally came through on patrol and she ran Sally off like nobody’s business.

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 here – one small chicken does not make much mess.

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 sleep in the bed) and checked on the chickens, too, who free-ranged during the day.

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 steams delicious South Carolina oysters. But the icing on the cake was the animals.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. A cultivar is a named variety of a particular plant that was selected or breed and vegetatively propagated to have special characteristics, so all the plants with that name are exactly the same. It used to be that people often planted seedling dogwoods in their yards.

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.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Dogwood anthracnose, with the frightening name Discula distructiva, was first identified in north eastern forests in 1978.  This disease has now has caused the death of over fifty percent of those trees growing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a huge hit for wildlife as dogwood fruits were a major part of the mast supply.  Mast is the fruits and seeds of woody trees and shrubs that birds and mammals use for food.

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 the word for the seeds, nuts, berries, buds, acorns and other forest produce that birds and animals rely upon for food.

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.

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 Edgefield. Over the course of 200 years, this quaint Aiken County town sent ten of its local sons to serve governor.

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 except that our culture does not safely accommodate bike and vehicle traffic sharing the same roads.

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 belongs to Beaufort County and has become the Spanish Moss Trail.

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 across the country.