Making It Grow Minutes

Black-eyed Susans, Rudbeckia hirta, are native biennial or perennial wildflowers with many cultivars grown by gardeners.

This summer it has been dominated by yellow flowers.

What are your "must haves" for tomato sandwiches?

Amanda McNulty shares her experiences making bacon mayo.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. In the winter time, cooking a frozen pizza is my easy go to supper. We have a gas stove, which adds heat to the kitchen, so I never turn it on in summer if I can help it. Hot weather suppers revolve around vegetable sandwiches, cucumber or tomato. White bread, peeled sliced cukes or maters, lots of mayonnaise. There’re lots of discussions about what kind of mayonnaise, all made more complicated by other concoctions similar looking to that white stuff in a jar, wildly different tastes. Most people I ask say they use what their momma’s used -- my mother didn’t even put mayonnaise in the refrigerator, maybe the acidity in the tomatoes saved us from potential food poisoning. Now I see recipes calling for – get ready for this --bacon mayonnaise. More on that to come.

Would you try potato chips on a tomato sandwich?

The chewing gum industry in North American exploded when chicle, the latex like substance from sapodilla trees, was introduced to America in the 1870s.

Resin from trees in the spruce genus was the source of the first commercial gum in our country, State of Maine Pure Spruce Gum.

Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? Some people do save their gum but prefer not to stick on the bed post. Fortunately, you can find adorable gum parkers.

For thousands of years people have chewed gums that are extracts from trees.

Birthdays, anniversaries, various milestones – all reasons for getting together. When having fun time flies and that’s just what’s snuck up on Making It Grow, we’ve been on the air for thirty years.

When it comes to popcorn garlands, you would think you'd just string popcorn and that would be that. But with the internet, there's step-by-step directions

People like to put different toppings on their popcorn.

Popcorn isn't just one particular variety; apparently there are tons of different popcorns out there

The U. S. Department of Agriculture is not just a place for the latest and best research on crops, diseases, and insect pests. While looking for information on popcorn, I came across the site for popcorn on the USDA History Library.

Archaeologists have identified remains of popcorn from at least 6,000 years ago.

In my part of the state, farmers plant large fields of sunflowers to attract mourning doves during the legal hunting season.

Among some of the sayings associated with sunflowers from the Teton Dakota tribes is, "When the sunflowers were tall and in full bloom, the buffaloes were fat and the meat good."

Annual sunflowers are important in the cut flower industry and grown commercially for cooking oil and for seeds eaten by humans and birds.

The annual sunflower is native to North America and was widely used by early indigenous people as food, a source for dyes, and lots of medicinal purposes.

Sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine.

My mother decided to be modern in cooking and discovered premade stuffing mixes. The bread based one had herbs in it and that’s what I grew up having at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Carolina aromatic rice should be kept in the freezer – along with South Carolina corn meal, grits, and other locally sourced items that make mealtime so pleasurable.

For some peculiar reason, I’d never heard of corn bread in buttermilk for lunch until we went to a laundromat in Atlanta next to an old-fashioned drug store and sat next to a gentleman who ordered that.

Most southerners make corn bread in cast iron skillets as the crust you get is superior.

Corn sticks are about the best kind of cornbread because the crust is fabulous.

Back in the day, when Silver Queen sweet corn became widely available, it was transformational for corn on the cob lovers. Sweet corn differs from field corn it the actual amount of sugar versus starch it contains when mature.

If you are fortunate enough to have a farming friend who plants lots of sweet corn and lets you come pick it, you’ll learn how to choose the best ears.

In those days, Silver Queen was the finest sweet corn available, and a relative grew several acres of that for friends to come and pick.

Corn is a new world crop, along with tomatoes, potatoes, and cashews.

Most grits you get to cook are from regular modern field corn, and they can be delicious. But make some choices for the best results – don’t even think about cooking (is it even cooking?) instant grits.

One native milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa, called butterfly weed, was super attractive to all sorts of bees, while common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca was the red-headed stepchild and completely ignored.

Monarch butterflies are specialists which puts them at a certain risk. Their larva can only eat milkweed plants – with habitat destruction and the use of certain herbicides on large acreages of crops, milkweed plants, once common across the country, have vastly diminished.

When we were filming the pollinator garden at Irmo Middle School, kids were throwing balls and racing around after their lunch break. Another athletic skill some students develop is based on activity in the garden, trying to capture adult butterflies with insect nets. Monarchs get a sticker applied to a spot on their wing, tags supplied by the national Monarch Watch tagging program.

At the Irmo Middle School, maypops, Passiflora incarnata, found their way to the pollinator garden without being planted. Probably they started when a songbird, many of which love maypop seeds, flipped its tail and deposited that seed when it landed in a shrub growing there.

We visited Irmo Middle School recently to see their pollinator garden. Originally started by science teacher Will Green to help migrating monarch’s use their only larval food source, milkweed, on their trip back to Mexico for the winter, this garden evolved into a teaching facility.

Sometimes laurel thickets are called laurel hells and there are tall tales in the Appalachian Mountains about men and hunting dogs getting lost in them never to be seen again.

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.

Kalmia Gardens in Hartsville was the creation of Mrs. D. R. Coker, affectionately called Miss May. The property, originally owned by the Hart Family who built the 1820’s structure, had become a dump during the depression. Coker dedicated herself to turning a garbage heap into a free, public garden.

Recently, our team went to Hartsville and filmed at Kalmia Gardens. Director Dan Hill took us down the slope on that property which drops sixty feet to Black Creek. Several plants there are glacial relicts – they moved down ahead of the glaciers during the Pleistocene era.

In cockscomb celosia the fasciation trait is reliably carried in the seeds. Cactus plants also seem to spontaneously develop this peculiar growth habit.

Herrick Brown, now the curator of the A C Moore Herbarium at U S C, visited us recently with eye-popping examples of fasciation in plants.

A native weedy plant, Eupatorium cappilifolium has the common name of dog fennel as supposedly the peculiar smell of crushed stems and leaves is attractive to dogs.

Flowers, of course, are supposed to be perfect and just cut but an arrangement of just flowers can be rather dull – but add an interesting stick or branch to grab your attention and you’ll stop to smell the roses, so to speak.

Herrick Brown is the new curator of the A C Moore Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, taking over from our friend Dr. John – a k a Dr. John Nelson. Fasciation was the feature of some specimens Herrick brought to Making It Grow recently – a weird type of plant growth when the something goes awry in the apical meristem – the specialized group of cells at the tip of a plant –and instead of elongating they flatten out and divide.

The glorious deep purple Judge Solomon Southern Indica hybrid azalea graces many Southern gardens and the drive into our prized national treasure Brookgreen Gardens.

A move to Florida for his health lead to the creation of a real beauty.

Brookgreen Gardens is a national treasure with stunning, sometimes whimsical sculptures set in acres of horticulture splendor. Not long ago, I was visiting, and although beautiful at any time of the year, the long drive in was breathtaking as the Formosa and Judge Solomon, both purple pink but with a subtle difference, were in full flower.

I went to Brookgreen Gardens recently where the drive in was at peak beauty with the Indica azaleas in full bloom. Some of the old Indica azaleas are named for people with curious histories.

When I was young, Momma would sometimes ride us around to look at the beauty of springtime in Columbia. People tended to have the same plants in their yards – backbones of spring beauty were the Southern Indica azaleas, with the scientific name Rhododendrum indicum.