What’s Happening with Hemp?

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

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

“Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.” Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

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.

Want to add a tropical flair to your garden this spring? Elephant ears will add a bold statement to a filtered sun or high shade spot. These striking “drama queens” of the garden may be either in genera Colocasia or Alocasia. The easiest way to tell these beauties apart is that colocasias (Colocasia esculenta) will have leaves that point downward, and alocasia (Alocasia species) leaves will point upward. Depending on the species or cultivar of each genus, the size can range from 3 to 10 feet tall and 2 to 10 feet in width. Both types of elephant ears are native to the tropical regions of Southeastern Asia.

In South Carolina, where many of our ponds have been constructed in clay soils, pond water quality may be less than ideal for fish management. Liming can be an important step in a productive and healthy fish pond as lime can improve pH, hardness, and alkalinity conditions, all important factors in fish health. For highly-fished, low-flow ponds where fertilization may be needed to support a beneficial phytoplankton community, liming may be required for effective fertilizer applications. (Contact your local Extension agent to find out more information on pond fertilization and if it is appropriate for your pond.)

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.

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.

I grew up with a fear of snakes. I wasn’t born with that fear; a fear of snakes was passed on to me by my parents and countless other people. And if their influence was not enough, books, television shows, and movies also told me to hate those slithering creatures.