Making It Grow Minutes

Watering blooming holiday cacti is a bit tricky. Amanda McNulty offers helpful tips to keep your plant happy and healthy year-round.

The "leaves" of Thanksgiving and Christmas cacti are not really leaves.

Amanda McNulty shares helpful tips to ensure your Thanksgiving and Christmas cacti bloom beautifully

Amanda McNulty describes the leaf difference on these two epiphytes, and why caring for them is distinctly different than nurturing their desert-dwelling cousins.

Host Amanda McNulty gets creative with cacti as she prepares her table for holiday celebrations.

While visiting her dying mother, Amanda McNulty brought Chickie Wimberly to comfort, entertain, and provide fun stories for future visitors.

Amanda McNulty's family finds ways to make their holiday meals special by adding memorable main courses.

Host Amanda McNulty has a history of keeping unusual pets, including a chick hatched in her child's classroom.

Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" shares more childhood stories of her unusual pets, their favorite foods, and the foods she and her family enjoyed.

Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" shares a vivid childhood memory of one of the many unusual pets she and her brother used to keep.

Street litter attracts mosquitos, but mass spraying harms more than just this one pest.

While "Making It Grow" host Amanda McNulty is usually in favor of planting and growing, she draws the line at her bathroom tile.

Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" explains how the sweetbay magnolia helps sustain a variety of wildlife.

Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" explains her preference of the sweetbay magnolia over magnolia grandiflora, a.k.a. the southern magnolia.

Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" enjoys the scent of tea olives this time of year when she opens her windows for a cool evening breeze.

Although cattle egrets are in the same genus as herons, they have a much different diet than their fish-eating relatives.

Where do cattle egrets build their nests? Host Amanda McNulty points the way on this episode of Making it Grow.

What and where do cattle egrets like to eat? Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" explains that some of these birds have very exotic dinner guests at their table.

Are you familiar with cattle egrets? Host Amanda McNulty explains how to identify them on this episode of "Making It Grow."

Cattle egrets are fairly new to the U.S. Host Amanda McNulty explains how and when they arrived in our country.

Interested in canning your own foods but don't know where to begin? Amanda McNulty shares a helpful starting point.

With the renewed interest in home gardening comes a renewed interest in canning. Is your equipment properly calibrated?

If you have a family recipe for canning foods, Amanda McNulty shares some resources to ensure your process is safe.

Looking for new ways to preserve your garden's offerings? Host Amanda McNulty shares her favorite ways to can and a great resource for more delicious recipes.

Some family recipes have outdated canning procedures. Host Amanda McNulty offers a helpful resource to update your process to ensure health and safety at the dinner table.

If you have carpenter bees boring into wooden areas of your house, here are some tips.

Carpenter bees can't sip from the inside of a flower. Amanda McNulty explains their workaround and its effect on cross-pollination.

Can you tell the difference between a carpenter bee and a bumble bee? Amanda McNulty teaches you how.

While Amanda McNulty decorates the inside of her home, carpenter bees are also decorating just outside her front door.

Male carpenter bees put on a good show, but there's no need to fear. Here's why.

You and what you grow in your yard, patio, or balcony are Nature’s best hope.

Preparing corn off the cob is a labor of love, but well worth the effort, according to host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow"

While in Los Angeles, host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" experiences a conversion regarding grilled corn on the cob

From Silver Queen to even sweeter varieties, corn's optimal flavor is best when prepared this way...

How do you like your corn on the cob? Host Amanda McNulty of "Making It Grow" shares her favorite way to prepare this tasty summertime treat

Host Amanda McNulty visits Joshua Tree National Park, home of the Cottonwood Spring Oasis

The eastern cottonwood is illegal to plant in some places.

Cottonwoods are found in places where there is plenty of water.

The leaves on eastern cottonwood are known for making "the lullaby of the prairies."

Cottonwoods are usually found in nature growing by water sources or in wetlands.

Mountain Laurel has a fascinating pattern of twisting and turning branches, very decorative to look at but hard to maneuver through.

A relative of our beloved mountain laurel is Kalmia angustifolia, called white wicky or sheepkill.

Although the common name of Kalmia latifolia is mountain laurel, you can find this handsome evergreen native plant growing, often in thickets, from the mountains to the sea, including on South Carolina's Fort Jackson.

Kalmia Gardens in Hartsville was the creation of Mrs. D. R. Coker, affectionately called "Miss May."

At Kalmia Gardens, a northern type of mountain laurel, galax, and a specific witch hazel have persisted in that unusual ecosystem.

Cicadas are native to our area and have been coexisting with their ecosystems for eons and eons.

Residents of the Palmetto State won’t have to go too far to experience the emergence of maybe a billion periodic cicadas.

When Thomas Jefferson was president, there was an event that is finally repeating itself this year -- a concurrent emergence of two specific broods of periodic cicadas; and it won’t happen again until about another two hundred years.

Unlike some people these days, cicadas don’t have dating apps; they use sound to find a mate.

Naturalist Austin Jenkins talked to us recently about the periodic cicada emergence in South Carolina. Our state’s cicadas that will come out in huge numbers in the Piedmont are on a thirteen-year cycle.