Making It Grow Minutes

When I was young, we had lots of fireflies in our Columbia backyard in the summer. But when we went to camp or my grandparent’s summer retreat in Saluda, North Carolina, the numbers seemed exponentially greater.

Agent Carmen Ketron, recently on our SCETV program Making It Grow, told us she’d seen the synchronous firefly display at the Congaree National Park. This phenomenon occurs at the end of May or early June for about two weeks every year.

Our state and nation owe Harry Hampton a great debt for his love of wildlife and years of work promoting that the Beidler Tract not be logged but instead preserved as what is now the Congaree National Park.

It wasn’t until Russian Mennonites came to the northern parts of the US and Canada in the late nineteenth century that sunflowers became a crop of interest in the US.

The list of other birds that relish these seeds is lengthy, a short list includes ring-necked pheasants, quail bobolinks, goldfinches, meadowlarks, nuthatches and tufted titmice.

The N R S C Plant guide for sunflowers is fascinating. 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.” Many tribes recognized the value of an infusion of sunflowers to treat chest pains.

Annual sunflowers, important in the cut flower industry, are grown commercially for seeds eaten by humans and birds, and for cooking oil. Sunflowers are one of the few important food crops that originated in north America.

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

Sunflowers are the national flower of Ukraine. a major agricultural crop, until recently grown on one hundred sixty million acres, and most of it processed for oil. Some think the Ukraine flag represents a blue sky over a field of yellow sunflowers.

Clemson’s Ag and Art Tour, from mid-May through June, features farms, art venues and more in eleven counties is a wonderful way to expose your children to farm animals, vegetables growing in fields, and the results of artists’ creativity.

We are proud of our farmers and artist, but to be real, we aren’t Iowa or New York city for either group. But sometimes smaller means more exclusive and unique and that’s absolutely true for Clemson’s Ag and Art Tours coming up in May through June.

We paid a sneak visit to Fox Hideaway Farms, one of Richland Counties stops for the Clemson Ag and Art Tours taking place from mid-May to the end of June.

Clemson’s Ag and Art Tours when you can visit local farms and even some artists’ studios, is free on weekends from mid-May to the end of June.

Will Culler of Clemson’s Agri-business team heads South Carolina’s Ag and Art Tour, the largest in the nation. What a great way to visit local farms and let your kids see where their food comes from.

Gosh, it’s astonishing how many people have gotten into growing or wanting to grow some of their own food since we changed our lifestyles because of Covid. When I was young, my parents planted a couple of tomato plants in the landscape beds, and we had tomatoes galore. With new pests and changes in our climate, growing has become more difficult. Clemson Agent Zake Snipes, a vegetable specialist who grows produce all summer in the heat of the Charleston area is offering a free, on-line, self-paced program to help those who want to explore perhaps a market garden or hobby farm. Called Farming Foundations, participants will learn about soil testing, fertility, irrigation, record keeping, and even tools and safety issues. If you search Farming Foundations Clemson, you’ll get to the website. And get ready for some delicious BLTs.

Hello, I’m Amanda McNutly with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. As a young child, I began using U S C’s McKissick Museum - at that time it was a library. Today its mission statement includes these words “The University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum fosters awareness and appreciation for the diversity of the region’s culture, history, and natural environment.” When the state of Pearl Fryar’s topiary garden and Mr. Fryar’s health was brought to director Jane Przybysz attention, she began work on a way to preserve this regional and national treasure. Eventually, with cooperation with the Atlanta Botanical Garden, the museum got funding for a topiary artist in residence – I’m sure that’s a first, and Mike Gibson, a self-taught and self-described property artist, is working with Fryar in his Bishopville garden. McKissick is to me an overlooked treasure for our state, please visit it on the old horseshoe.

When Pearl Fryar was transferred from being a plant manager up north to being an assistant plant manager in Bishopville, he was unable to buy property or a house in many parts of town. Despite these slights, he eventually turned his landscape on the outskirts of Bishopville into a topiary garden celebrated internationally. The theme of his garden was and is to this day love and open to one and all. He also supported scholarships for average students who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten higher education. His ability to spot potential even had him retrieving plants that had been discarded from nurseries and giving them new life in his garden.

Team Making It Grow traveled to Charleston recently to the small garden behind St. John’s Reformed Episcopal Church. During a Spoleto outreach project many years ago, this garden showcasing two of national artists’ unique skills was installed. A master of iron work design and craftsmanship, Phillip Simmons, created unique and appropriate gates and wall openings. Topiary artist Pearl Fryar designed a small but exquisite example of his unique artistry. A committee of the Garden Club of Charleston has been tending this garden but recently took lessons in Fryar’s techniques from Mike Gibson to learn some of the specific techniques. The McKissick Museum at U S C got a grant to hire Mike Gibson, a self-described property artist, to work and learn from Fryar in his Bishopville garden, as that world-renowned topiary artist is aging and limited in his activities.

Clemson Agent Zake Snipes, a vegetable specialist who grows produce all summer in the heat of the Charleston area is offering a free, on-line, self-paced program to help those who want to explore perhaps a market garden or hobby farm.

Lonicera sempervirens is a native, non-aggressive honeysuckle wonderfully attractive to pollinators, including hummingbirds and butterflies.

For a home garden, you may want a medium-sized trellis as it tends to flower at the ends of vines.

Clematis armandii, named ‘Apple Blossom’ has buds that are a lovely soft pink, and even when the flowers open, the lower part of the petals retain that color against the pure white center.

When COVID shut down many activities centered in the urban garden area, the staff started making flower arrangements and putting them out for medical professionals to pick up on their way to their workspaces. Eventually, as part of the goal of horticultural therapy, the grounds crew began collecting flowers, greenery, and grasses and letting people gather safely outdoors to make arrangements.

The Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston has embraced the mission of making its campus an integral part of its health and wellness goals and is a certified arboretum.

The grounds crew at the Medical University of South Carolina designs and maintains a calming and relaxing campus setting, with passive and active outdoor activities. Besides their horticultural expertise, certain members of are trained in horticultural therapy to serve a diverse in-patient clientele.

At the Medical University of South Carolina the grounds crew strives to make the campus a stress relieving space not only for persons coming for appointments but also urban dwellers who are welcome to stroll the grounds. A good place to start is the Urban Farm.

Who in the world would want to go the hospital for a relaxing, refreshing experience? Well, people who know about the remarkable campus at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, that’s who.

You can make red food coloring beets!

The South Carolina Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program ( S A R E) gives small grants for educational events that train the trainer.

Beeturia is the name for the process by which fresh beets turn your urine and stools dark; it affects about fifteen percent of people.

It's all in the genes...

I’ve found a recipe from Watsonia Farms, a large producer of organic vegetables, that really intrigues me.. It's called crispy baked asparagus.

When I was first offered huge, fat asparagus, I demurred but after tasting them quickly converted to a super colossal fan. Since they are picked every day, large asparagus are just as tender but come from a larger root shoot.

During the twenties, thirties and through the forties tons of asparagus vegetables were shipped to northern markets.

My husband’s mother, born in 1901, said that when she was young and sat down at the dinner table with her numerous brothers, sisters, maiden aunts, parents and guests, the children often gave out a collective groan when the cooks appeared with platters of asparagus. “Oh, Momma, asparagus again!”

When Hurricane Hugo came through South Carolina, Sumter County was really hit hard. The magnificent Swan Lake Gardens lost several hundred pine trees exposing camellias and azaleas to unwelcome sunlight. But only a few bald cypresses were lost. If you come across a young bald cypress, shake it and you’ll find that is flexible, even adult trees are not brittle like pines. The ones in water with their interlacing knees have a giant support system in play protecting them against strong winds, even hurricanes. In ice storms, they again have an advantage over pines as they are deciduous and have no needles for the ice to accumulate on and cause the trunks to break. You can grow bald cypress in a regular landscape – they don’t make knees in ordinary soils – just buy a bale of long-leaf pinestraw for mulch.

Dendrochronology is the study of information obtained from tree ring growth. It is used in several different fields – archaeologists can date wooden artifacts, dendrologist – tree scientists – can use tree rings to determine the local climate. But perhaps the most interesting is climate science. Professor Dave Stahle of the University of Arkansas told us at his talk at the Congaree National Park that the Lost Colony, called that because none of the original settlers survived, was ill-fated due to several factors but one fact that scientists have established is that those people who were trying to grow crops to feed themselves had no chance of a good harvest as they sadly were dealing with the drought of fifteen eighty-seven through sixteen hundred. Tree ring analysis shows that fifteen eighty-seven was the driest year in eight hundred years.

You can easily see large majestic bald cypress trees if you walk the boardwalk at the Congaree National Park. But retired DNR wildlife biologist John Cely who has explored the Park extensively, you might enjoy his blogs (at Friends of the Congaree Swamp) had found large cypress inaccessible except by boat and took Professor Dave Stahle, the world’s expert on bald cypress, to that area. Professor Stahle took tree cores from the largest of those trees to get information on their age and the climate they had grown in for probably over a thousand years. The oldest cypress trees Dr. Stahle has found are in the Black River preserve in North Carolina and are over 2,000 years old. The size of bald cypress doesn’t necessarily indicate their age; ones that grow in nutrient poor wet soils grow slowly.

I attended an outdoor lecture at the Congaree National Park last month, an appropriate site as Dave Stahle, Professor of Geography at the University of Arkansas, and the world’s authority on bald cypress gave the talk, and the Park is home to the state-record holding cypress tree. Stahle takes very small and minimally damaging core samples from trees and studies them to age trees and document climate change -- he has sampled trees that are two thousand years old. The science of dendrochronology is studying information derived from tree ring growth. These ring samples allow to date exactly what years had normal, above normal, or subnormal rainfall as the rings are larger or very small depending on how much the tree grew. In our part of the country, bald cypress are the oldest trees and provide the most information.

If you feel cramped or overwhelmed, you should visit the Congaree National Park right outside of Columbia. Of its 26,000 acres, the core protected area is fifteen thousand acres.

You can easily see large majestic bald cypress trees if you walk the boardwalk at the Congaree National Park. But retired DNR wildlife biologist John Cely who has explored the Park extensively, you might enjoy his blogs (at Friends of the Congaree Swamp) had found large cypress inaccessible except by boat and took Professor Dave Stahle, the world’s expert on bald cypress, to that area. Professor Stahle took tree cores from the largest of those trees to get information on their age and the climate they had grown in for probably over a thousand years. The oldest cypress trees Dr. Stahle has found are in the Black River preserve in North Carolina and are over 2,000 years old. The size of bald cypress doesn’t necessarily indicate their age; ones that grow in nutrient poor wet soils grow slowly.

If you go to mig.org and watch the Nov. 9 show, you’ll learn about Food Share and how getting fresh food to people became even more critical during the pandemic. When people get their box every other week, they get recipes, too. Forty percent of us have gained weight during the pandemic; lack of exercise, eating “comfort foods,” and finding it harder to get fresh foods. The meal we cooked on that show was delicious, and I looked at the Food Share website to see if I could find more recipes. Boy, oh, boy -- what a treasure trove. I’m going to start fixing some of these meals, get healthier suppers for my family, and expand my repertoire and recharge my interest in cooking at the same time. Who can resist “garlic smashed sweet potatoes with parmesan cheese?”

Christa Gonzalez of U S C Medical School, Columbia, joined Clemson’s Rural Health Agent Ellie Lane on a recent sMaking It Grow program talking about how access to fresh food and its preparation are critical for our citizens’ health. One in eight South Carolinians has been diagnosed with diabetes and each year a larger percentage joins that group. Gonzalez and Lane talked about the Food Share program available in most of our state – every two weeks participants get a box of fresh food – and recipes on how to prepare healthy meals with those items. Gonzalez leads the culinary medicine program at the medical school in Columbia –all students get some instruction in that topic. Extension’s Rural Health agents have on-going programs helping people control diabetes and hypertension; knowing about Food share can be part of that work.

Food Share began in Canada and has now spread across our country as the need for affordable fresh, healthy food has become more critical. Food deserts affect many rural or inner-city areas, and with the pandemic, all these problems have been exacerbated. Thanks the U S C school of Medicine, a grant from Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and a cadre of local volunteers, people in many areas can get a small or large box of fresh, healthy food every two weeks. Two persons involved came to Sumter recently to explain how citizens with chronic health problems can make improvements to their lives using this program -- and we fixed a delicious, healthy meal from a Food share box. If you’d like to see that episode, go to mig.org and watch the Nov. ninth show.

Spartanburg Extension horticulturist Drew Jeffers joined Making It Grow recently to discuss the South Carolina Certified Landscape Professional certification program. Extension experts present self-paced, on-line trainings on such topics as turf selection and maintenance, proper planting techniques, tree selection and installation, disease and insect identification and control, as well as irrigation and environmentally sustainable practices.

One older lady told me she was hesitant to try it but ended up going back for a second helping.

World-renown geneticist, Clemson’s Stephen Kresovich, and other research faculty will combine their crop-breeding talents to develop varieties that will allow South Carolina farmers to produce vegetables in the face of extreme changes in temperatures, rain and drought challenges, and other environmental pressures.

Clemson and the Swink family are joining forces to combat this problem. The family has made a gift of three million dollars to develop vegetables with resistance to higher temperatures and other factors that limit yield.

In recent years, changes in climate have resulted in high night-time temperatures and dramatically reduced the fruit set of many of our important vegetable crops. When it is seventy-five degrees or higher at night, many crops will not pollinate – there maybe vigorous, well-tended plants in the field that are covered with flowers, but the pollination process is impeded by those high thermometer readings.