Making It Grow

Clemson Extension Agent and Host of “Making It Grow, Amanda McNulty is joined by fellow agent Adam Gore who talks about how to properly choose and use fertilizer.

Clemson Extension Agent and Host of “Making It Grow, Amanda McNulty is joined by fellow agent Adam Gore who explains what the numbers on bags of fertilizer represent and mean.

Clemson Extension Agent and Host of “Making It Grow, Amanda McNulty is joined by fellow agent Terasa Lott who shares her ideas of transforming her yard from turfgrass to one that is more habitat friendly. 

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. South Carolina’s watermelon queen for 2019, Courtney Kubo, visited Making It Grow recently. She and other state’s representatives gave out 44,000 containers of watermelon at the Charleston Bridge Run recently and will do the same in Washington, DC, for the Marine Corps Marathon. Watermelon flesh is a great way to rehydrate – it’s almost all water and contains potassium which helps regulate fluid levels.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The US Department of Agriculture Ag Research Service just announced on June 26 a very exciting breakthrough for watermelon growers.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Downy mildew that infects cucurbits overwinters on growing plants in Florida. Every spring, spores are carried by wind and move upward into neighboring states. Different plants are affected by different strains of this pathogen, and some strains are resistant to traditional fungicides. Only expensive and restricted products can be used to save certain crops and require absolute adherence to s spray schedule.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Certain strains of downy mildew are serious diseases of cucurbit family members  – squash, cucumbers, melons and watermelons. Watermelons, in particular, are very important economically for some South Carolina farmers. Infected plants have angular lesions on the tops of leaves but the reproductive structures, resembling a grey, white mold, are on on the underside of the leaves.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. In our old house we use an attic fan in the summer. That cool air is a blessing but with it comes humidity and some of my shoes are mildewed by the time fall comes. Mildews are aesthetically and economically damaging to some ornamental and vegetables crops. Powderly mildew made it hard for us to grow the  native Phlox paniculatas in hotter parts of the south and the indispensable summer herb, basil has been devastated by downy mildew..

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Summers in South Carolina can seem endless as autumn seems to come later and later each year. The phrase Endless Summer has a happier connotation, however, when it comes to a series of reblooming hydrangeas. The fancy word for reblooming is remontant, meaning a plant blooming or producing a crop more than once a season. The Endless Summer series are the first ever reblooming cultivars producing flowers on both old and new wood.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Clemson horticulture agent Barbara Smith is one of the experts who answer plant problem and food safety calls made to Clemson’s Home & Garden Information Center, HGIC  for short. Each week she also shares through the Clemson HGIC free weekly email newsletter beautiful pictures of flowers or interesting plants she sees at the South Carolina Botanical Garden on Clemson’s campus.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Clemson’s Home & Garden Information Center, or Clemson HGIC for short, is the “go to” site for researched-based information applicable to South Carolina. The selection bar includes the topics Landcape, Fruits & Vegetables, Indoor Plants, Food and Entomology, with subdivisions under each. Right now a useful fact sheet is number 2212, Tomato Diseases and Disorders, with helpful pictures and text.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Recently we had a caller whose hydrangeas didn’t have a single bloom although the foliage was lush and healthy and the plants got plenty of morning sun and had bloomed in past years. Our horticultural experts reminded viewers that some of the older varieties of bigleaf or French hydrangeas only bloom on last season’s wood --- the plants set flowering buds before the plants go dormant in the fall.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Recently Terasa Lott asked the Making It Grow panel about viewer’s question. This person purchased and planted a hydrangea in April. She correctly sited the hydrangea to get morning sun and afternoon shade. But it quickly started having brown edges on some of those large, fleshy leaves, even though she had irrigation.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Clemson Agribusiness Agent Ben Boyers and his partner Strauss Shiple of the Old English District Tourism Commission have exciting events planned in ten South Carolina counties for each of the five weekends that we have coming up in June., Ag and Art Tours. Here is a quote from their website: The South Carolina Ag + Art Tour is a free, self-guided tour of farms and markets featuring local artisans at every stop!

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Elderberry stems are semi-woody, the interior is filled with pith. The late John Fairey, renowned botany professor at Clemson, told his students that this pith was collected and used to pack delicate scientific instruments and by repairmen to hold tiny parts of watches, back in the day when people actually fixed mechanically-run timepieces.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Professor Greg Reighard, Clemson researcher and international fruit specialist, explained that elderberries are primarily wind-pollinated. Although the flowers are extraordinarily showy, which you think would be a sign that they are attracting all sorts of pollinators, don’t produce nectar so insect visitors are only be collecting pollen.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Elderberries grow in Australia Europe, Japan, parts of south America and in North America into the far east coast reaches of Canada and across the entire United States. The species with black fruits, Sambucus canadensis are the ones we find in our part of the country, which is fortunate, as the blue berries are toxic. Actually, all parts of the plants contain toxic compounds but when heated the ripe black berries make delicious wine or a pie.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Some people have horrible commutes; highways clogged with traffic and slow moving traffic even with speed limits of 70 miles per hour. My hour spent traveling from St. Matthews from Sumter is mostly a delight as I pass fields filled with row crops growing vigorously on those Fort , red clay enriched soils. Then I cross the Congaree and head into a long flat traverse with more fields and woodlands until I descend into  the Wateree flood plain.

Hello Gardeners, I'm Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Some hummingbird moths, so named because of their size, visit yucca flowers at night to enjoy their nectar. But the important pollinators are yucca moths. Relatively small white insects, the female moth enters yucca flowers and uses special mouthparts called tentacles to collect pollen, which she rolls into a ball to transport. She lays her eggs in the ovary of a yucca flower, and then places some of the fresh pollen onto the female stigma.

Hello Gardeners, I'm Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Some yuccas deservedly have the name Spanish Bayonet or dagger because of the sharp points at the ends of their leaves. But we have two native yuccas that are much less threatening and still have beautiful blossoms. Both Yucca filamentosa and Yucca flaccida are smaller and have somewhat softer foliage than their big relatives, and flowering stalks that top out at five feet. The leaves have threads, filaments, along the leaf margins, like fabric unraveling.

Hello Gardeners, I'm Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Like Yucca aloifolia, Spanish Bayonet, the plant called Spanish Dagger, Yucca gloriosa, also is native only to the lower southeastern states. Although it has a similar size and flower display, its leaves aren't quite so stiff and have a less lethal point at the end. John Nelson tells me the margins of Yucca gloriosa leaves are smooth and won't cut your fingers.

Hello Gardeners, I'm Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Many people who have cut grass with push lawnmowers think that there should be a special place in the hell for yucca plants, as they have backed into them and suffered a painful stab wound. As a matter of fact, an Australian hospital reports it has treated dozens of persons with serious ear injuries incurred while working around yucca plants. The most dangerous yucca we have in South Carolina is Yucca aloifolia, or Spanish Bayonet.

Hello Gardeners, I'm Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Right now, striking plants that are grown in many yards, and in cemeteries, and along roadsides are capturing our attention. Yuccas are tough, hardy plants that can persist for years and years without care and right now are blooming their hearts out. With flowering panicles that can be three feet by two feet and supported on stalks that can reach twelve feet in height, their masses of showy white blossoms top the charts for the WOW factor.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. A rose I thought was native that’s blooming now, I’ve always heard it called Cherokee Rose. Now I find out that this single white, high climbing rose, with the scientific name Rosa laevigata, is exotic, not native, and in some places considered invasive. Jonathan Windham, a specialist at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center in Florence, who provides information on genetically modified organisms, is also a rose enthusiast.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Knockout Roses took the South by storm as they bloomed happily without requiring treatment for black spot fungus. Sadly, they and other garden roses are falling prey to rose rosette virus. Infected plants can have reddish stems, misshapen leaves and stems, and other growth abnormalities. A tiny, 1/200dredth of an inch long, eriophyid mite spreads the virus if it feeds on your roses.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. A viewer wrote to us about a problem with her roses. I referred her to Clemson’s Home & Garden Information Center where horticulture experts take phone calls helping people with problems in their yard or garden. Just Search Clemson HGIC for that phone number and then press zero to get to a real, live person.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. One of my favorite visits last year was to Pat Henry’s beautiful home in Laurens. You can see this segment by searching Making It Grow/YouTube/Pat Henry’s Rose Garden. Because of vole pressure, she forms a screen wire cage around each plant’s root ball before planting it. This fits in with her overall approach of growing roses without spending hours and hours fighting pests and diseases.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Last year, team Making It Grow visited Pat Henry up near Laurens, SC. Pat is a world-renowned rosarian and partner at Roses Unlimited. She maintains a beautiful yard devoted to a half dozen small gardens devoted to those plants, watered by hand as she doesn’t have irrigation. Amazingly, she doesn’t spray for black spot or Japanese beetles.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The nightshade family, Solanaceae, includes some of our favorite vegetables (although they’re fruits in the botanical framework). One important gardening and farming practice is crop rotation. If you plant the same crop over and over again, diseases that favor that plant family will build up in the soil. So it’s important to keep gardening dairies and to know what plants are related to each other so you can rotate effectively.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow.  Mated female bumblebees overwinter in sheltered underground locations. In spring, they emerge and collect pollen upon which they lay eggs. The resulting new bees take over the work of collecting pollen and nectar and the hive increases. Although they are social insects, bumblebees are relatively docile and usually not a threat to people.