Making It Grow Minutes

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.

The South Carolina Botanical Garden is a treasure located on the campus of Clemson University.

If you can eat those delicious pine nuts without trouble, you probably aren’t allergic to pine pollen.

Agriculture is the largest industry in South Carolina, with timber being by far the most valuable crop, and pines are the largest component of that.

Pine trees produce male pine cones on the lower part of the tree and female ones towards the top, a clever way to prevent self-fertilization.

There’s actually a scientific method to establish when pines will be releasing pollen: by keeping a record of the number of degree-days above 55° Fahrenheit after February 1st.

If you can safely leave dead branches or even a dead tree on your property, you could end up with at-risk birds happily cohabitating with you.

In part of our large yard, one area has three dozen mature pines. Occasionally one gets hit by lightning and dies, becoming a snag, and we leave them up.

The American kestrel, our smallest falcon, is a handsome bird easily seen as they perch on power lines looking for prey on the ground below or flying past them.

We know about the crisis of people without homes but there is also a crisis for cavity-nesting birds.

Host Amanda McNulty of Making It Grow sees the natural beauty of the Wateree floodplain during her daily commute.

Ladybug larvae, both native and imported, are described as looking like alligators. But, there's an important difference between the two...

Asian ladybug beetles prefer to come inside the part of the house that gets afternoon sun.

Asian ladybug beetles will eat damaged apples, grapes, or other fruits, sometimes creating ladybug wine taint.

If you have Chinese wisteria, please be a steward of the environment and eliminate it.

Benjamin Franklin brought the tallow tree to the U.S.

Two vegetable scientists, Powell Smith and Mark Fortnum, traveled through South Carolina and Georgia on a search for old timey collard plants, especially ones in flower.

At the Coastal Research and Development Center 2023 brassica field day we saw a field with several hundred different collard green plants growing in it. There’re two major types of collards.

Nationally, South Carolina is the top state for producing turnips greens and second in collards, kale and mustard greens.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. There are 50 species of cotton in the genus Gossypium — basically they’re seeds with fibers attached. Only a few are commercially important.

I visually see changes in agriculture and society on my daily commute to Sumter. From the older compressed modular storage units of cotton, today’s extraordinarily complex cotton picking machines press the cotton into round units and wrap them in a protective covering before depositing them in the field, all the while continuing to pick cotton from the plants at the front of the machine.

Making It Grow celebrated thirty years of being on air with SCETV this year. The show was developed and hosted for much of that time by Rowland Alston, a Clemson Extension agent and son of an agent.

The early mechanical cotton pickers dumped their filled bins into carriers which were then emptied into wagons in the field. Workers drove these wagons to the gin daily and waited for hours as each was emptied and credited to the farmer.

This year's cotton crop seems phenomenal. It’s the closest thing to a snow-covered landscape I’m likely to see in these days of changing weather patterns.

Hickory tree leaves are the larval food source of two hundred moths or butterflies; and one is particular is spectacular in both the larval and adult stage.

For people, shelling them is a laborious process and the tools used include hammers, vises, and a peculiar item called the Texas York Nut Sheller.

It's hard to harvest at home.