What Do Bearded Dragons Eat? Find Out!

The row on the left has succumbed to bacterial wilt. In the row on the right are grafted plants that had bacterial wilt resistance.

A pothos at Patch Plants

Garden Sprouts is a program I run at the South Carolina Botanical Garden that is designed for preschoolers and caregivers. This class takes place once a week for three months every spring and fall. The goal is to share age-appropriate nature-based activities with children, who are mostly three to five years old, but sometimes younger or older. Over time I have learned the caregivers also learn things they never knew, enjoy the activities immensely, and are able to connect more deeply to the natural world through this program. The structure of this hour-long program is three-fold, we begin inside with a book related to the theme of the day, a walk or outdoor activity, and finally a craft. In this blog, I would like to share some of the books, outdoor activities, and crafts we have done in this class.

The recent news that all Pyrus calleryana cultivars – the most common of which is the Bradford pear – and several Elaeagnus species have been added to the “do not sell” list in South Carolina has generated a lot of buzz and a lot of questions from homeowners. We’ll try to answer some of those questions in this blog post.

If you’re looking for an inexpensive and easy way to re-establish vegetation along a waterway, livestakes are for you! Livestake installation is a method of propagation that uses cuttings from a select few species of plants that love to grow along rivers, wetlands, and streams. They merely look like 2-foot sticks to the untrained eye, but livestakes are full of life and ready to start growing when the weather turns warmer.

A thriving hemp industry is emerging in South Carolina despite some growing pains. When the South Carolina Department of Agriculture (SCDA) received approval for the state hemp plan under the USDA early in 2020, over 350 farmers in the state obtained licenses, and 220 farmers obtained licenses in 2021 to grow hemp for its valuable flowers. The decline in applications for licenses to grow hemp between the two years was due to nationwide overproduction of floral hemp in 2020, which prevented some farmers from selling their product. As the industry matures, these supply and demand issues are working themselves out across the country in the floral hemp industry as hemp grown for other products that utilize its fiber parts and seeds is on the rise. We see federal agencies implementing new rules, more grant opportunities for hemp research available, and better banking and insurance options for farmers coming online.

Each year the South Carolina Department of Agriculture puts out a call for applications to farm hemp in the state. In 2022 nearly two hundred farmers were issued permits to grow industrial hemp in South Carolina.

What controls are in place at Clemson University (CU) to ensure compliance with state and federal hemp farming regulations? Clemson University’s Regulatory & Public Service Program works closely with the South Carolina Department of Agriculture (SCDA) Hemp Farming Program (as authorized by SC Code Ann. 46-55-10 et seq.) to ensure all program requirements for working with Industrial Hemp are met and that all CU employees and the public are protected.

Did you just see a fuzzy red and black ant scurrying across your yard, driveway, or pine straw? Then you just saw a velvet ant – they’re closely related to ants but are actually wasps. There are many species of velvet ants in South Carolina, but the species Dasymutilla occidentalis is probably the most common and most often seen.

This is an Eastern garter snake. These nonvenomous snakes are pretty common in South Carolina and are active most of the year.

This leaf is showing symptoms of a fungal disease called large leaf spot (Monochaetia sp.) that affects oaks and chestnuts. The appropriately named spots may reach 2 inches wide and stretch across the entire leaf, killing large amounts of tissue.

IT’S ALMOST TIME—for seeds, that is; to delve into catalogs, order, and then try to be patient till it’s time to sow. To that end—the timing part—I’m suddenly taken in bya $4 companion from the all-organic Seattle Seed Company (above) whose job it is to keep me on schedule, and not jumping the gun (or forgetting something till it’s too late). With a low-tech pullout format, you “set” your first and last frost dates and then the “when to sow what” falls into place. At this price, how can I resist the promise of feeling like I finally have it all together?smart birds: recycling butts into nestsYES, BIRDS USE the usual twigs, grasses, and feathers. But apparently they use cigarette butts, too—or so scientists at Scotland’s St. Andrews University have reported after studying house finch and house sparrow nests in Mexico