Making It Grow is brought to you in part by the South Carolina Department of Agriculture, Certified South Carolina Grown helps consumers identify, find and buy South Carolina products.

McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina.

This family farm offers seasonal produce including over 22 varieties of peaches.

Additional funding provided by International Paper and the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation and Farm Bureau Insurance.

♪ Well, good evening, and welcome to Making It Grow !

We're so happy that you can join us tonight.

I'm Amanda McNulty, a Clemson Extension agent, and our program is a collaborative effort between Clemson University and SCETV.

I want to take a minute to tell y'all that we have a new set that they're building, and I know you're gonna like it when you see it, and we want to thank you for staying with us.

Everything's been different for everybody, but we've been trying our very best to answer your gardening questions, and we thank you for sending them to us, and we want to make sure that you can have the best possible chance of getting that elusive tomato that everybody aspires to.

I want to welcome our guests tonight.

It's all Clemson people, and that makes it mighty homey.

Chase Smoak is with us, and Chase is the Extension agent here in Sumter, and he also does some work down in the neighboring counties.

Chase, thanks for being with us.

>> I always love being on here and seeing you, Tony, and Terasa.

Glad to be back.

I feel like I've been away for a minute.

<Amanda> I know.

We've missed you.

We'll have to do better at getting you back over here with us.

Tony Melton, of course, hardly needs any introduction.

He's been gardening since he was about five years old.

<Tony> Four, Amanda.

<Amanda> ...and helping all of us to garden.

Tony, you help a lot of commercial vegetable and small fruit growers, don't you?

<Tony> Yes, I do.

I get to look over...

It's a privilege.

There's nothing more beautiful than looking over a thousand acres of collards, a thousand acres of peppers, five hundred acres of tomatoes.

There's nothing more beautiful than that except my wife, of course.

<Amanda> One thing, Tony, is you help... we have such a large cannery over in Effingham, and of course, so you think not only that there are so many people who are taking the wonderful produce that your growers grow, and then it goes to create jobs for the people who work at the cannery.

So we just want to remind people again how important agriculture is to the economy of South Carolina, and always when you can, look for that Certified South Carolina Grown.

That really can make a huge difference to our farmers.

And then to Terasa Lott is the Master Gardener Coordinator for the state, but she's so wonderful to us here at Making It Grow , and she usually has some pretty wonderful Gardens of the Week pictures for us.

>> Thank you, Amanda.

We do have Gardens of the Week courtesy of our viewers.

We're going to begin today with Penelope Penn who shared a photograph of a bearded iris.

This one is called "I've Got Rhythm," and she said she's really not normally a fan of iris but planted this one for her husband and is impressed with how beautiful it is.

Bob Eakle captured what he says is the bird feeder bandit getting away, a squirrel running along the top of his fence.

Mark Carlson shared with us a native known as Jack in the Pulpit.

Wayne Johnston captured a monarch caterpillar feeding on a milkweed species, of course, the host plant for monarchs.

And wrapping it up, Janice and Larry Elder took some photographs at Edisto Memorial Gardens and shared this of all the roses there, a place that I have put on my list of go-to's.

Thanks so much to everyone for sharing your yards, gardens or other beautiful places in South Carolina.

This is just a small sampling, so we do hope you'll visit our Facebook page to look at what others have submitted, and of course, submit your photos as well.

>> Thank you, Terasa, and if I might add, I live very close to Orangeburg.

I live in St. Matthews, and the roses are just beautiful, and while you're there be certain that you continue walking.

They have a boardwalk that takes you along the Edisto River, one of those blackwater creeks, and it's just exquisite.

I would encourage you to take advantage of that so you can delve deeper into nature.

The Edisto River is certainly one of the most beautiful ones in the state, so don't miss that after you first stop and smell the roses.

So Terasa, I think you've got some questions that people have been sending and submitting.

Tell me what we've got to discuss with our experts tonight, please.

<Terasa> I would be happy to.

When it comes to gardening, there's never a shortage of questions.

We receive them through phone calls to our office, on our Facebook page, so here is... We're going to use those questions that we've received in both formats, starting tonight with a question from Dave in Belton.

Dave writes, I've not had much luck growing beans.

My plants seem to be growing well and appear healthy, but I don't see many flowers.

What am I doing wrong?

<Amanda> Oh, my goodness.

Tony, backyard gardeners make up so many of our viewers, and we want them to have success, but there are some difficulties, and so please give us some good backyard gardening advice about trying to grow beans in South Carolina.

>> Well, Amanda, I love beans, and I grew up on beans.

That is a staple in South Carolina, is beans.

But beans have got where they're very difficult to grow in the summertime.

In the spring and the fall, we can grow 'em really well, but in the summertime the flowers do not set, they do not pollinate properly, they fall off the plant.

That's one of the hardest things, so you've got to plant your beans early in the season.

One of the other things that can happen to those flowers is thrips.

Thrips are tiny little insects that will get into the flowers because they love color.

They love yellow and blue, especially blue.

They'll just go right into the flowers and damage the flowers and the flowers are damaged, and then they'll fall off the plant and not produce any beans, and then again also, you can over fertilize with nitrogen on beans.

You have to put a little bit of nitrogen out in the beginning.

Now potassium and phosphorus, there's no problem with those, but that nitrogen, if you get too big of a plant, grow too lush, beautiful, wonderful plant, you'll have no beans, so you've got to balance it out.

Life's a balance.

The same thing with tomatoes, these same things can hit tomatoes, and then you don't have a good tomato crop.

I've had many homeowners say they had ten foot tall tomato plants, but when you ask them how much they yield, they don't yield very much, and the thrips will get on there too and the heat also damage those flowers, so plant beans and tomatoes either early in the spring or late in the fall, Amanda.

<Amanda> And so Tony, a great deal of that has to do with the increase in the night time temperatures that we're having in the summertime at night.

Is that correct?

<Tony> That's right.

<Amanda> It interferes with pollination.

Is that correct?

<Tony> That's right.

We don't grow things like in Florida where they grow things in the wintertime when it's not that hot differences at night.

Night is when the plants rest.

Like me, I take a nap at night.

You gotta have a good sleeping period.

That gives the plant strength.

It gives them time... Actually, plants grow at night.

That's when they grow.

That's when they put on fruit.

That's when they do their thing a lot is at night when they don't have the heat of the day to withstand, Amanda, so they're just...

They love those cooler night temperatures, Amanda.

>> Tony, for your fall crops, if you were gonna replant beans for a fall crop, when do you think you would want to put those seed out?

>> Starting in July.

Starting in July.

I'd start the first of July, then plant 'em up through maybe the middle of September depending on how long the days 'til harvest are.

Then you're taking some chances, but I always like to take chances.

You know, gardening is a little bit of thrilling.

It's kind of like going to Las Vegas, Amanda.

You take a little bit of a chance, so I like to push it a little bit to fall.

<Amanda> Okay, thank you so much.

Terasa, earlier when she was showing us the pictures of the Gardens of the Week , showed us a monarch caterpillar on a milkweed, and so that's a good reason to tell you that we're going to now show you the Monarch Way Station in Greenwood, and if you're up that way, they're having the Festival of Flowers going on now.

You will certainly want to stop and see this lovely place that they have put just for monarchs.

But actually, it's put there for our enjoyment too, because it's such a beautiful place to sit and enjoy the beautiful flowers, the sounds of the water, and all the other features.

♪ [light, upbeat music] ♪ I'm in downtown Greenwood, South Carolina speaking with Rusty Wilson, who is a Clemson Master Gardener and also a Citizen Scientist, and we're in a beautiful and kind of unusual garden for a downtown city.

>> Yes, ma'am.

This is the Greenwood County Veterans Center Pollinator Garden.

It's a pollinator garden because flowers have been planted to attract pollinators such as bees, butterflies and things of that nature.

It has also been designated a Monarch Way Station because the monarchs that migrate between Canada and the northern part of the United States will come through here on their way to Mexico and back again, and this is a way station for them to stop to nectar and to lay eggs.

>> And so you plant specific plants for the eggs to be laid on and the larvae to eat, I believe.

<Rusty> That would be the milkweed.

The milkweed is planted for the monarch butterflies for that reason, and I'm involved in a Citizen Science Project for the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project which is a Citizen Science Project sponsored by the University of Minnesota, and what I do is I count all of the milkweed in the garden, and as I'm counting the milkweed, I'm also counting all of the butterflies that I see, and when I'm counting the butterflies, I'm talking about all the stages of the monarch butterfly life cycle after which I will report that to the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project lab website.

<Amanda> And what are the stages?

<Rusty> Well, there's the egg.

<Amanda> Yes.

<Rusty> The egg hatches into a larva also known as a caterpillar, and that larva will shed its skin several times, and each time it sheds its skin, it's in a different stage.

It's called an instar.

It has five instars in that larval stage, after which it will pupate, which means it will spin a chrysalis, which will encompass the insect, and while it's pupating, it will transform into an adult.

When it transforms into an adult, it will, after about one to two weeks, it will emerge as an adult, and it will fly south, presumably.

<Amanda> And you say they come through sporadically, but basically two times of the year, I believe.

<Rusty> The fall and the spring.

<Amanda> And so perhaps in the spring, they're going from their winter home towards the north?

<Rusty> Yes.

<Amanda> And then in the fall, coming back down.

And you said that there's not a whole... We're trying to figure out where they're concentrated, so that we can be more mindful of protecting them.

Is that one of the reasons to collect this data and find out where they are actually in the country?

<Rusty> Yeah, this data is to help us get more knowledge about the butterfly distribution and abundance, and hopefully with that knowledge, we can inform and inspire people to take butterfly conservation more seriously.

<Amanda> I've asked you if you had to change your eyeglass prescription, because you took me around to show me how you look for things, and these are very small, and you have to look under every leaf in a lot of cases.

<Rusty> I'm looking at each leaf.

When a monarch lays its eggs, more often than not, it's going to lay its eggs underneath the leaf, so I'm having to look underneath the leaves to find the eggs.

Also, many of the larval stages are going to be underneath the leaves.

The thing is, that's not exclusive, because I have found some eggs laid on top and some larva on top.

<Amanda> Well, I want to thank you for a very time consuming but important part of the research that's going on to try to help us understand how better to keep this beautiful insect as a part of our natural surroundings.

<Rusty> Thank you.

♪ [light, upbeat music] ♪ <Amanda> Greenwood is full of beautiful surprises.

There are lovely restaurants where you can socially distance or take things out and find all kinds of beautiful places outdoors where you can eat your meal, and they have little surprise gardens all over town, so do go and visit that wonderful city.

Terasa, I know you are always finding... people are getting in touch with you, and you're so connected with the Master Gardeners.

There are all these questions that homeowners have, and so I bet you have another one that we could try to help our homeowners and gardeners with.

<Terasa> That is correct.

Aaron from Hartsville wrote to us.

"I recently removed a crape myrtle affected by crape myrtle bark scale.

Can you suggest some possible replacement options?"

<Amanda> Ooh, this is gonna be timely, and if you're not familiar with crape myrtle bark scale, we have a very good fact sheet at Clemson HGIC that you might want to read.

Chase, I know you were in the propagation business for a long time, and trees are something that you know a lot about.

Can you give us some ideas of things that we might enjoy adding that won't be terribly difficult to grow?

<Chase> I think one of the main issues we've had with crape myrtles, Amanda, is that they've been so densely planted.

Anytime we have dense populations of anything, just like with humans, if a disease or any type of insect pest comes in, it can really run rampant.

That's kind of what this crape myrtle scale has done.

So I want to talk about three substitutes that I really love, and this 15 to 30 foot bracket for small trees, I think any horticulturist will admit, it's kind of hard to pick and choose in there, but three of my favorites...

So the first one is going to be Styrax japonicus, or Japanese Snowbell, and I actually have one of these in my front yard.

It has a beautiful white, umbra-like flower that hangs down in the spring.

Like crape myrtle, it is deciduous.

It works fine through zones 5 through 9, so that's the whole state right there.

<Amanda> I have one also, and it actually has kind of an interesting branching habit as well, doesn't it?

It's a little bit twisted.

It's not just straight limbs and straight limbs.

It has some interesting twists and turns, I think, in the branching sometimes.

<Chase> There are several cultivars out on the market now for the Japanese Snowbells.

American Snowbell, I'm not sure.

We do have a native snowbell as well.

I'm not sure if it's been cultivated quite as much, but there are some options out there for that as well, but the bark is fantastic.

I love the bark of the trees, so that's a wonderful one, works well in most any type of soil, and it's very low maintenance.

The second one is Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry, which they have it listed as working in zones 4 through 7B, but Terasa has a Serviceberry in her yard that she says does really well, so I think plants can kinda...

They never read the book, so they're going to do whatever they want.

[Amanda laughs] So it gets to be about 15 by 20 feet both ways, so it has issues with some dry... like if you get too dry or too wet, by definition, too much is a bad thing, so if it gets too wet or too dry it can have issues, but it has a wonderful white flower on it.

It blooms in the spring, but the foliage in the fall is what is the real show stopper: bright red, bright oranges, and it's beautiful.

The third and last one is Chionanthus virginicus, or the white fringetree.

A lot of folks are familiar with calling Grancy greybeard.

It gets 10 to 15 feet high, probably 8 to 10, maybe 6 to 10 feet wide.

You can put this in tree form.

A lot of people think of it as a shrub and naturalized plantings, but you can actually put it in the tree form and use it different places in the yard, so it kind of fills in that bracket well, so all these plants are white blooming in the spring.

They're deciduous, and all fall in that same height and width category as crape myrtle.

A lot of people know crape myrtles can get pretty wide if you don't cut 'em in half, so I think these are some great substitutions.

<Amanda> Well, and it sounds like even beyond a substitution, they would just be wonderful additions to many people's yards.

They bring something different, and each one has its own special charm, and I want to thank you for turning on that idea in my head.

I think I'm gonna start looking for some of those.

Thanks a lot.

<Chase> Thank you.

<Amanda> Terasa, I believe that you recently had an interesting conversation with Dr. David Coyle.

Is that correct?

>> Interesting might be one way to describe it, so people might think that you or I are immune to problems because we happen to have a television show about gardening, but in fact, no one is immune, so I am fortunate in working for a land grant university, that I have great connections with reaching the experts that can help solve problems, so yes, I just talked with Dr. David Coyle about a problem in my very own front yard.

Joining me today is Dr. David Coyle, Assistant Professor of Forest Health and Invasive Species.

Dr. Coyle, I noticed I have a tree that seems to be suffering in my landscape.

It's an Eastern Redbud, just a few years old.

It's not leafing out like it should, and upon closer inspection, I noticed these strange looking toothpick-like structures on the trunk.

If anybody knows what's going on, it's you, so can you solve the problem?

>> Hi, Terasa, I can, and I'm afraid I have bad news.

You have ambrosia beetles in this tree.

What you're seeing are these - you called them toothpicks - they're actually a combination of sawdust, fungal mycelia, so little strings of fungus, and beetle poop, and those get pushed out as those female beetles drill into that tree, and basically when a tree has those noodles, those toothpicks, it's not going to come back.

That's it for that tree, and your option is to get a new one.

<Terasa> Wow!

Well, that's not exactly the news that someone might hope for, but at least we can use this as a learning experience for others.

So let's learn a little bit more about what these beetles do and how they do it.

>> Sure, there's over 3,000 species of ambrosia beetles.

They're very common all over the place, and they infect pretty much anything that's woody.

This includes shrubs, trees, vines, poison ivy.

If it's woody, they can be affected by ambrosia beetles.

Most of them are not that aggressive, meaning they're really only going to attack a tree or vine or shrub if it's already stressed somehow.

Maybe it was flooded, or maybe it had some injury from something physical, a truck running into it, that type of thing.

Maybe it's a drought.

We see a lot of ambrosia beetle damage during drought when trees are just overall stressed.

The best thing anyone can do to try to keep ambrosia beetles from their plants, is keep those plants healthy.

So keep them watered.

Mulch them.

Just take the good care that you need to with those plants.

And what ambrosia beetles are doing, they're not really eating the live tissue of that tree.

They're very different from bark beetles which go and they feed on the phloem, that live part of the tree.

Ambrosia beetles are drilling pretty much straight in, and all they're doing is making a house.

They're making a home.

They're making a little gallery in there, and all these ambrosia beetles have these pockets somewhere on their body.

In some cases it's on their back.

Sometimes it's on the side of their face.

It might be on the side of their head somewhere, and those pockets carry fungal spores, little tiny fungus spores, and as that beetle is drilling into that tree or shrub or vine, the fungal spores gets on the inside of that wooden gallery.

Those spores grow, so there's a fungus in there, and that is what the little ambrosia beetle larvae eat, so they're not actually eating the wood, they're eating the fungus that grows inside that wood.

<Terasa> Absolutely fascinating.

It still isn't good news for my tree, even though the beetles themselves are not necessarily the ones that are causing its demise.

<Dr.

Coyle> Right, and that's what we tell folks all the time.

In most cases, if your plant has ambrosia beetles, it was sick a long time ago, and there's not really a quick fix for it.

Now, there's a couple of exceptions, and two of these exceptions are pretty common in South Carolina.

One is called the Black Twig Borer, and this is a little teeny tiny ambrosia beetle, but tends to just kill the tips of branches, common on magnolias, a lot of showy trees you see in a yard or street, so you might see just a branch die back here and there.

That's just a tiny little ambrosia beetle drilling into that stem and then killing the end of that branch.

It won't hurt the overall tree.

You can prune out the affected place, and it's one of those things where this too shall pass.

In time it kind of goes away.

The other one we have, though, is much more serious.

This is the Redbay ambrosia beetle, and this transmits laurel wilt, and we've written about laurel wilt for some of our Clemson Extension works.

This is a really deadly disease that affects any plant in the family lauraceae, so we're talking about bay trees.

We're talking about sassafras trees, camphor tree.

There's a whole bunch of them that grow in South Carolina, and when this ambrosia beetle attacks this tree, and that fungus gets in that tree, it's pretty much a fatal blow for the tree.

There's not much the tree can do.

A big difference with this ambrosia beetle, that Redbay ambrosia beetle, is it can attack live, healthy trees, so this is one of the rare instances where an ambrosia beetle will attack a perfectly healthy tree.

Again, this is a non-native species, which might explain some of it.

It's not quite as aggressive in its native land, but where it is here, it will attack those healthy trees, anything in that family.

<Terasa> They're very sad.

You mentioned about, so in most cases the ambrosia beetles are attacking trees that are already sick for whatever reason.

How is it that they know or perceive that a tree is stressed?

>> Great question.

When trees get stressed, they give off chemicals, and the most common chemical that comes off a tree when it's stressed is ethanol alcohols, and these ambrosia beetles are very attracted to alcohol.

In fact, if you take some hand sanitizer or spirits, and just put some on a sheet or a little towel outside on your deck in the summer, you will probably get ambrosia beetles that will fly around and land on that thing, and you can catch them very easily, because they can sense this ethanol from long distances, and they will fly to it every time.

So that's what they're doing.

They're always out there.

They're always around, and they're just sort of flying around trying to sense that ethanol.

When they find it, they just follow it to that stress tree or vine or shrub, and then that's when they make their make their move.

<Terasa> Interesting.

Now, these ambrosia beetles are non-native, correct?

<Dr.

Coyle> We have both native and non-native ones here in the U.S.

There's a lot of them that are native.

There's actually a fair number that are non-native.

Of those non-native ones, only a couple of them are really, really aggressive: the Redbay ambrosia beetle like I mentioned, Black Twig Borer is aggressive but doesn't usually kill a tree.

There's a fair number that are non-native again, but for the most part, they're kind of in the background feeding off the old and the weak, so to speak.

<Terasa> Goodness!

If the tree is - infested, I guess, might be a word for my particular tree - would I expect to find one beetle, multiple beetles?

How does that work?

<Dr.

Coyle> Very often you'll find multiple.

They tend to travel in packs, more or less.

When one can sense that that tree is giving off ethanol, many of them are probably gonna suspect that or detect that, so you'll often see those, and so when you see those frass tubes, those toothpicks, each toothpick represents a single female beetle that has gone in and made that gallery.

Ambrosia beetles are fairly unique in that a lot of times they can produce young with or without mating, so females can either just be a single female, she can get in there and lay eggs that will develop into adults, or mating could take place, and then eggs can come that way and become adults, so it's a really interesting life cycle they have.

But yes, long story short, each of those toothpicks is a separate female, so where you have instances where there's toothpicks up and down the tree, that just means there's a whole bunch of beetles in there.

<Terasa> I didn't see a whole bunch.

That's not a very quantifiable term, but there were multiple, so we can safely say that there were multiple beetles within the tree, and then as far as the eggs go, is there an approximate number that an adult female might lay in one gallery?

<Dr.

Coyle> Yeah, that varies quite a bit, from just a dozen or so to dozens, so it really varies depending on the type of beetle.

There's just such a wide variety of ambrosia beetles, it's kind of across the board.

<Terasa> I think the moral of the story, at least in my particular case and for most homeowners across the state of South Carolina, an ounce of prevention equals a pound of cure, and the absolute best thing we can do to protect our trees is to keep them healthy, so follow good cultural practices making sure we're keeping them watered, keeping them mulched, fertilizing appropriately, keeping them happy in a sense.

<Dr.

Coyle> That's right, and if it makes you feel any better, I also lost a redbud this summer or this spring to ambrosia beetles, so you're not alone.

<Terasa> That does make me feel better.

It sort of makes you feel like a failure when you're talking to people about growing things successfully in the landscape, and then sure enough, a pest comes along and knocks one out.

<Dr.

Coyle> It happens.

Look, it happens.

We deal with it and we move on.

<Terasa> Well, thank you so much for taking your time to talk with me about my particular problem and sharing your expertise with all of our viewers both in the state and outside as well.

I really appreciate Dr. Coyle taking the time to chat with me about the problem in my yard, about the ambrosia beetles that had taken up residence in my redbud, and I think this is a great opportunity to point out how important it is to get an accurate diagnosis.

Amanda, I have people reach out sometimes with problems, and they've tried just throwing everything but the kitchen sink at a problem, and that's really not always a great idea.

<Amanda> You're exactly right, Terasa, and so often people will tell us that they've been using an insecticide, and they may have a problem that's a fungal infection, so really that's a waste of chemicals and really a misuse of the label and adding pollutants to the environment in an unnecessary way, so do reach out to your local Extension office, and we will find someone.

We have experts like Dr. Coyle, who are not hoity toity, sitting in the ivory tower, are they, Terasa?

They really will help us.

<Terasa> They will, very down to earth, and that is our mission at Clemson Cooperative Extension, to share that information with those who need it.

I was looking for something to make a hat with, and then lo and behold, right outside the back door, my husband had some amaryllis, so I got up and tiptoed out there this morning and cut 'em while he got his cup of coffee.

And then, hostas are just so lovely, and if you haven't been to the botanical garden at Clemson, they have a magnificent hosta garden selection and area there, so do take advantage of that, but anyway, that's what I had for my hat today.

So Terasa, again, people do have problems.

It's not so easy to grow things in South Carolina.

We have real fluctuations in temperature and rainfall also, what's another question that you think we might be able to help someone with?

<Terasa> Well, it seems Jessica from our viewing area, but from Georgia, so our neighboring state, is having a turf grass problem, not uncommon.

She says, "I'm trying to get grass to grow back in an area that is just dirt but has grass on each side.

Can I use a fertilizer to help it grow and fill back in, or would it be best to sit down some pieces of sod?"

<Amanda> My goodness!

Well Chase, you've got little boys running... a little boy and a little girl running all over the place.

You may end up having some patchy places in your turf grass with those little barefooted children.

What advice do you have for this questioner about her home turf?

<Chase> Right, I think this question actually came from my sister-in-law, so hey, Jessica, so I'd better get it right, I guess, if I want to get Christmas presents.

So with any soil issues, every three years anyway, you should be doing a soil test.

So it's like going to the doctor whenever they check your lungs and check your heart rate, you've got to get that base, so we know we're starting, because any deviations in pH or nutrients, you know, Amanda, it can throw things out of whack in a heartbeat, so starting with that soil test.

You could have areas with compaction, where you may need some type of core aeration.

A lot of folks don't even think about that.

We see things like lawn burweed, which is kind of an indicator of compacted areas a lot of times, so in situations like that, core aeration actually comes and pulls little plugs out and drops 'em off, versus solid tine aeration which kind of just pokes holes instead.

So what you're trying to do is create more pore space to alleviate that compaction.

Then of course, if it's real shady, folks never like this answer, but if it's real shady in your backyard, you may have to choose between trees or turfgrass, and sometimes you may have to extend beds out and just get a little creative with the landscaping back there, but definitely starting with checking the pH and nutrients is the first place to go, correcting that and moving on, because you can't just fill something in if the soil's not correct, because it'll die right back in a heartbeat.

<Amanda> So you could actually do more harm by putting out fertilizer without finding out what your nutrient load is to start with, because too much fertilizer can be just as bad as too little, I believe.

<Chase> That's right, and Tony said it.

He was dead-on earlier when he talked about too much nitrogen.

Not only will you be mowing your grass about ten times a week, but a lot of other disease and insect problems come in right behind it.

<Amanda> Terasa, although we're not answering questions in the old format style of everybody sitting around a table, we're still answering those backyard and home gardening questions, aren't we?

I bet you've got another one for us.

<Terasa> I do.

We are as busy as ever, maybe busieR, because I think there's increased interest with gardening in the home landscape.

Mary from Saluda wrote to us.

The previous homeowner grew blackberries.

I'm excited to grow fresh fruit, but have no experience.

Can you give me a crash course?

<Amanda> Tony, when I was little, we used to just pick blackberries wild because they almost can grow like a weed, can't they?

<Tony> That's right, Amanda.

My mama used to love to go out to the sides of the ditch banks and the roadside and pick blackberries.

They were the little small ones, but they made some of the best little pies.

Mama made... always Mother's Day was not too long ago.

I had to think about my Mama, so I think about her every day, I think, but these blackberries are really weeds to a certain extent.

They grow all over the place.

They're all over the place, but I want to warn people.

Don't go out and pick blackberries along the road anymore, because they spray the roads now, you don't want to go out there and get a hold of some chemicals that you shouldn't be getting a hold of, so grow your blackberries.

They're easy to grow in the yard.

My preference would be a thornless blackberry.

You could even have blackberries that grow in the early spring that produce thornless, without any of those thorns on 'em.

You don't have to go through the thorns to get 'em, and then again in the fall, Arkansas varieties that grow in the fall.

The Prime Ark varieties are in the fall, so you could have spring blackberries and enjoy them through the spring and also through the fall and just have an abundance of blackberry cake, pies, and I love 'em just fresh too.

That's my favorite way.

I have 'em out here.

In my robe when I go get my newspaper and mail, I'll eat 'em on my way out and come back in eatin' 'em again.

They're just great plants to have around, and all you got to do is prune 'em good once a year.

Keep 'em pruned good once a year.

Prune out the stuff that has already fruited, and let the new growth come in, and you'll have blackberries upon blackberries, and one thing I thought of that blackberries don't like, that is too much water.

They love it in McBee, in McBee where the sandy... where I grew up, they love it on sandy soil.

They can grow on that, but they don't like too much water.

They will drown, so don't give 'em too much water, but when they're fruiting give them enough water to produce some good, luscious, nice fruit, Amanda.

<Amanda> Okay, and so really, you can get good production from thornless ones and not have to be so careful about not getting all scratched up, and that's just wonderful that somebody's done that work, isn't it?

<Tony> It sure is, mostly done at University of Arkansas.

We really appreciate the wonderful plants that they have produced out there.

<Amanda> Okay, thanks so much.

Terasa, sometimes we have insect problems.

Sometimes we have disease problems, and sometimes we actually have some other critter problems, don't we?

Do you get questions about those?

<Terasa> Oh, yes, especially moles with an 'M' and voles with a 'V'.

This question comes from Jackson from Inman, and he says he doesn't know if he has moles or voles, and can we help him understand the difference, and then once we do that, how to manage them.

<Amanda> Oh, goodness!

Well, Chase, if you could figure that one out, you could just move to the beach and get a beach house and lie in the sun for the rest of your life, because this is kind of a hard one sometimes to deal with it, isn't it?

<Chase> It is.

They can be aggravating, but there are some simple ways to work around it.

The first thing is you need to identify whether it is a mole or a vole.

Both of them kinda have little gray hair, and they look almost like little underground rats running around, but moles have more of a paddlelike or paddle style foot.

You can't see their eyes.

You can't see their ears.

Voles, on the other hand, look like a little mouse, almost.

They have small beady eyes and small ears.

I remember listening to a radio segment you did one time where you said 'M' is for meat, and 'V' is for vegetarian.

So moles like to eat grubs and worms, so they're paddling around and eating those things, while voles like to go and they actually like to eat vegetative material.

A lot of times, what we'll see with the voles, is they'll actually go in and gurgle, right around the base of the stem, which is one of the many reasons why we shouldn't volcano mulch, right?

Just gives 'em a little more access to that vascular tissue.

So if we're dealing with moles, the easiest way... usually what the moles do, is they'll live somewhere close to a base of a tree, and they'll have these... as we know, they have these little tunnels that they kind of radiate around their home site in the yard, and that's where they move through every day, so spear traps, the ones where they come through, and they hit a little pressure plate, and spears come down and kind of stick 'em.

Some folks don't like that, but that's really one of the only effective ways.

There are some labelled baits that you can use, but you should be very careful about reading the instructions, because it could put some household pets and other animals at risk.

<Amanda> Oh!

<Chase> Yes, ma'am.

As far as voles go, just a little slap trap like what you'd typically use for mice, you can put peanut butter with oatmeal.

The only part of the trick you have to remember, is you have to either cover it with a little box, or you have to tilt a little bucket over the top of it, because voles don't like to feed in the open, so they can be a little shy, but those are the two easiest ways to go about dealing with moles and voles.

<Amanda> And also, I guess, by putting it in some kind of contained area, you know that your kitty cat won't go out there and get it snapped on its nose or something like that too.

<Chase> That's right.

<Amanda> Chase, sometimes it seems like after we have a lot of heavy rains, the moles are worse, and I thought maybe that's because the insects they feed on, is there's less oxygen down in the saturated soil, start moving to the surfaces.

Is there any truth to my thinking that way?

<Chase> That's a really good question, and I would think it has something to do with the food coming up.

During rain we see a lot of earthworms moving up, a lot of grubs, so it definitely could be.

That's something I'm gonna have to read up on.

<Amanda> Okay, and also, if you want to, sometimes just always walking out in the morning and stepping down on the grass and those hills and just making sure that your grass still has good soil contact can help minimize some damage, I believe.

Couldn't it?

<Chase> It can.

It definitely can.

<Amanda> Chase that was a really good explanation, but is this something that a lot of people seem to be puzzled with and plagued with?

Do you hear from people a good bit about moles and voles?

<Chase> Yes, ma'am, we sure do.

I believe, starting in the spring most every year that I've been with the Extension - I'm going into my third year, so I'm not quite as experienced as y'all yet - but so probably 15 to 20 calls a week just on moles, moles and voles, which you remember how many calls come through the office, so it is definitely a big portion in the spring, spring and summer.

<Amanda> Well, and there's just no real simple solution.

It's just kind of persistence, isn't it?

<Chase> That's right.

Don't give up.

<Amanda> Alrighty, Amy Dabbs was an Extension agent, and she just got real involved in the School Gardening Program, and now she specializes in that, and she's just done a wonderful job, but she still is a plant lover at heart, and she's going to take us to one of her favorite wholesale nurseries, and we're going to see some of the fun plants that they're growing there.

Well, I'm happy today to be speaking with my fellow Extension agent, Amy Dabbs.

Amy started out as a Hort Agent, just like me.

She's now the statewide Coordinator for the School Community Garden Project, but she sure still loves plants.

Amy, you've been to visit a friend of ours who we talked about once before, to see the wonderful things he has for this year, so tell us about your visit, whom you went to visit, then let's talk about some of the terrific things that you've found when you got there.

<Amy> Hey, Amanda, so I went back to visit our friend Dan Gravano at Gravano Farms down in Colleton County.

It's just outside of Walterboro in Ruffin, if anybody knows where that is.

And he's a wholesale plant producer, and he does a really great job, and there are so many fun, new things that gardeners are going to see on the shelves in the garden centers from the Lowcountry up to the Midlands, that Dan produced, so I thought it would be fun to bring some of them and show everybody in South Carolina what they could see.

<Amanda> I think there's a really exciting story about one of these plants.

<Amy> There is, Amanda.

So I'm gonna pull this one off my little garden table here, and it's kind of heavy, but I want to show you.

This is Amelia's White, and this plant is pretty familiar to gardeners, I would say, as a houseplant.

This is a Tradescantia, which most people may have the more familiar purple and green, and there's also an improved variety on the market that's a pink and white and green that's real popular, but this one with this variegated green and white foliage, it is like, it's just a show stopper, and it was developed by Dan and another South Carolina plants woman, and they have created this beautiful plant through just selection, so the original was a sport, which we know is when a plant just exhibits a new piece of growth that's got some kind of unusual habit to it, a different color flower or a different color foliage, at least, but it's just beautiful, and here in Charleston we love these green and white color combinations because they're so cooling in the heat of the summer, and they work well in very formal gardens with all the black iron work and the traditional parterre type gardens.

These color schemes work really beautifully, but there's just something nice about these filler type plants that kind of gently trail.

I don't know if you can see how much it's already trailing over this pot, and it's just so stocky and full.

It's just... it's luscious.

I love it.

<Amanda> Well, what else did you find that you got real excited about?

<Amy> This is going to live up to its name, Amanda.

This is a hydrangea, and it's called Game Changer, and I love the name, because it really is going to change the game.

This is a day neutral hydrangea, which means we can cut it whenever we want to.

It doesn't need that old growth to start the buds, and you have to wait for next year to have flowers and prune it and all that good stuff, so it's only gonna get about maybe a foot and a half tall, by about three foot wide, so it's gonna be gorgeous in those beautiful urns in the shade with some ferns and some Creeping Jenny or something bright with it.

It is just, it's a game changer.

It's a game changer.

And since I mentioned it, I will bring out the Creeping Jenny, because I definitely...

This is called Super Jenny.

I wanted to just take a minute and talk to our garden friends.

I know everybody knows this, but you and I were talking beforehand, but there's one thing you can do to add length and longevity to your combination plantings, is to work with your foliage.

Of course, Amelia's White, that beautiful striped foliage or bright green Super Jenny or a Creeping Jenny, which will work well in a partial shade to full sun situation.

Now we've got these bright, beautiful sun coleus.

This one's called Wasabi, just like on your sushi meal, so it's that bright chartreuse green, and so if you've got like a shady place, these bright colored really brighten it up, and sometimes even in full sun, these colors sort of get washed out, but not with the coleus.

They're so richly colored, and these new varieties are sun coleus, so unlike the coleus we knew that you always grew in the shade, and they would get leggy and you had to pinch them, these you can still cut the flowers off to keep them nice and stocky, but they will do well in full sun, which I just, I love that.

<Amanda> And the nice thing, Amy, is that although there are so many wonderful plants that do have flowers that are extraordinarily beautiful, but often those flower maybe six weeks or something like that, and then we have an attractive plant, but we don't have that color, and with the sun coleus, it's just the leaves, so they are there all the time.

<Amy> And you can cut the flowers back and really keep them nice and stocky and bushy and full, and there are some flowers that I brought back from my little trip down to Colleton County, that are, I think what sometimes we refer to as shoulder season plants.

They'll do well during the spring, early summer, and they'll do well in the fall, but during the heat of the summer, they don't always flourish, but with your container plants, Amanda, one thing you can do is you can sort of let certain plants shine for a while, while other ones are maybe not enjoying the heat, but one of my absolute favorites for this is nemesia.

This is something that will act as a trailing plant, even an almost horizontal look to it, because it doesn't go straight down.

It kind of reaches out, so it gives you that really nice 3-D look in your pot.

This one is called Bananaberry, and it's got these beautiful...

I don't know if you can see the back.

The backs are almost like a mauve purple, and the inside has deeper purple and yellow, so it just picks up on all the other colors in your combination pots, and for those of you like in the Midlands and Upstate, you're gonna get a little bit more time out of this than maybe you would in the Lowcountry, a few more weeks of bloom time.

Maybe by the end of June they would start kind of melting back not flowering as much.

That's okay, just leave them in there and let something else show out for a little while.

Then when the nighttime temperatures start to drop back down below 70, you will start to see a little bit more flowering, and it'll started kind of roar back for the ball, so that's a really fun one.

And I'm loving these petunia as another one that I love, is a shoulder season plant, and these are not your grandma's petunias.

These are just so beautiful.

You're almost like painting a picture would be gorgeous, muted but rich tones.

These also have the nice purple backs and the yellow fronts, so you're getting so much bang for your buck, even from just one little pot.

I loved this one, and we also even have some nemesia in our favorite color, one of my favorite colors, orange.

So bright and beautiful, and it will sort of fade out in the heat of the summer, but that's okay, because it's just worth it for the beauty.

<Amanda> Amy, I feel like sometimes the wholesalers don't get the credit for the incredible hard work they do.

I know that you said that Dan has several acres and only a few employees, and sadly during one time, several of them had an exposure to Covid, and he was trying to handle things himself.

My hat is really off to him and all the others, but he's just got a fun story, and I like knowing about him.

Is there a way that we might sometimes find out if a plant came from him?

<Amy> Absolutely can, and I'll use this beautiful fuchsia, this Wind Chime fuchsia, to show you his signature pots with his son who's a grown man now, but this is a drawing of him as a child, and it says 'Justin Time' by Dan Gravano.

So he works so hard to get these beautiful plants out into the marketplace just in time for gardeners to get into their container gardens, their window boxes, and even their landscape.

So this beautiful... this is a Wind Chime fuchsia, and Amanda, it looks like a cartoon it's so perfect.

Like, it's just gorgeous, but I love this homage to his son and also to his late wife who helped to design this logo, so this is just a whole lotta love in these plants that are going out to gardeners, and you're right, we should acknowledge how difficult this year has been for producers, particularly with Covid and them just having to really respond to the huge demand that gardeners have shown, because what did we all do when Covid hit?

We went out and gardened.

Everybody's in their yard more and more, and that's a great thing for the industry, and we just salute all the growers.

Whatever you're growing, thank you for all that you're doing.

<Amanda> Well, and I want to thank you for making the trip down there and bringing these beautiful things to show us, and tell Dan that we hope that one day he'll have time to catch his breath, and we'll get to say hello to him in person.

<Amy> I will definitely do that.

Thank you, Amanda.

<Amanda> Dan Gravano is so kind and generous to always share with Amy, and then she shares with us some of the wonderful new introductions that are in the nursery industry.

Tony, when you start watering and providing great fertility, you're also attracting weeds and insects that want to come and enjoy those wonderful conditions as well.

Have you got any tips for taking care of easier ways sometimes than some of the old hand picking or hand pulling ways?

<Tony> Well, Amanda, gardening in the South is not easy.

You don't come down here or move into the South and think it's gonna be easy.

It's gonna be troublesome.

Weeds and things are tough, and insects, but some of my quick, easy tips is to use propane tanks.

You can get all kinds of different nozzles to go on top of them, even one they use for copper pipe.

You can get a small nozzle to go on top of it.

Just light it.

Go out there and go quickly.

Even a little tank like this will do a hundred square foot garden many times.

Just don't touch the base of the plants too much and go quickly, and it'll scar the leaves of those weeds and take 'em right out, and you won't have as much pulling to do, Amanda, if you can do it two or three times a year, and it works rather well.

It's one of the major things they use in organic gardening, is flamers these days.

<Amanda> And also Tony, if you're not pulling a weed, you're not pulling more weeds to the surface for the seed bank too, isn't that correct?

<Tony> That's right.

Those seeds are not covered up, and even the flames can hit a weed seed or two and kill it too.

It doesn't take much to kill those weeds, so that's my way with weeds.

Get out there and do it early.

The earlier you do it, the easier they are to kill.

And then on insects: a good vacuum cleaner.

I've got a shop-vac here.

Get a hose, and just go shhhhh.

Just go around.

You can pull in stink bugs.

You can pull in all kind of grasshoppers, thrips, and even aphids and things that come right off the plant, and you can cut your problems tremendously without damaging the environment with some kind of insecticide spray.

Don't be fussing about the poor farmer who has to do stuff like that, to spray acres, with you doing it yourself in the lawn garden, when you can just take a vacuum cleaner out there and take care of a lot of your insect problems, or a propane tank to take care of your weed problems.

<Amanda> Tony, so now you've got these insects inside that shop-vac.

What's the best way to dispose of them, Tony?

So as soon as you cut it off, tie it up, throw it in a trash bag, and throw it away, Amanda.

<Amanda> Okay, well that's easy enough, and get those boogers out of the garden and into the trash.

Thank you so much.

And I want to thank all of y'all for joining us tonight, and all of the great people who helped give answers, and remember, we're here to help our gardeners and plant growers all throughout the state keep in touch with us.

Night-night.

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