Making It Grow Minutes

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.