Making It Grow Minutes

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.

For six years, Tony has been selecting and growing out promising seeds, trying to develop a more heat-tolerant butterbean.

Tony has said that serving the people of South Carolina has been his greatest honor and joy.

At meetings, in restaurant, while scouting fields for insect and disease problems, he never stopped taking calls from persons needing his advice.

Our recently retired, due to illness, Clemson colleague Tony Melton has many constants in his life. For one, he has never stopped being the humble fellow from McBee, South Carolina, who started picking cotton when he was three years old.

Without a doubt, the most beloved member of the Making It Grow crew is Tony Melton. I guess we could call Tony the collard guy, or the strawberry guy, or the tomato guy – he’s listed as a specialist in small fruits and vegetables but, honestly, he’s an expert on car repair, roofing and even building a house all by himself.

SC turtle species have been in peril as trade in those animals, sometimes in illegal international channels, has been putting certain species at risk.

Any of these lizards you kill, capture or find dead should be reported to DNR as they perform necropsies on them to get valuable information about just what animals they’re eating and to check for parasites and diseases they may spread.

A new law prohibits the sale of the Argentine black and white tegu lizard, requires their owners of them to microchip them, and owners must notify the state if one escapes.

Certain lizards, especially, are very popular and unfortunately one has become invasive in Florida and Georgia and is now established in our state.