Making It Grow

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.

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 miles of agriculture and timberlands unused.

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 appearance.

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 pigments as the rainfall and temperatures in those northern areas are usually just right for that process to occur.

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 any color in the spring.

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 of the deciduous trees, including the bald cypress, are beginning to show color.

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 probably was looking for was a pest of our Brassica crops – the imported white cabbage moth.

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.

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 rise to another common name of cow cabbage.

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 Elder, a Roman senator and historian living roughly 200 years before the Christian era, also had an interest in agriculture.

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.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug is considered one of the worst invasive species that’s arrived in our country from Asia. First discovered in Pennsylvania in 2001, it’s now found in most of the US and has spread to other continents. In all cases, it’s a major pest of agriculture and difficult to control, requiring increases in pesticide use as it feeds on a wide variety of crops including fruits and vegetables.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. We’ve had ninety degree temperatures in October, but during a brief cool spell in September, one of the worst imported pests, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, started its annual intrusion into my upstairs.  I awoke one morning to find these garden pests hanging out on my curtains and Edward had to suck them up with the vacuum, then empty the canister into a bag, seal it, and put it in the trash.

Hello Gardeners, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. I’ve heard stories of a farming family that almost separated as a new wife, raised in the city, put up wallpaper covered with morning glories. Ipomoea purpurea commonly known as Heavenly blue morning glory, is native to the Central Valley of Mexico and is considered an aggressive weed in agricultural crops like cotton and corn. As I drive on 601 from St.