Making It Grow Minutes

The original purchase of eighteen hundred acres of virgin cypress and tupelo gum swampland is the heart of Beidler Forest. Imagine a place where several cypress trees are documented as being over one thousand years old. Cypress trees are well adapted to withstanding hurricanes; they are, compared to pines, flexible, and their extensive knees that develop when growing in wetlands probably provides extra stability. But this virgin forest does not look all that old – there are mostly large but not huge trees and many small ones, as well. Hurricanes and other natural forces change even woodlands not disturbed by man. At Beidler, they leave trees as they age and as they fall (unless they are a danger to visitors on the boardwalk). We saw standing dead trees full of holes from pileated woodpeckers – they’re fond of carpenter ants that eat rotten wood.

Beidler Forest Audubon Center’s manager Matt Johnson said this is red-letter year for the larvae of the Eastern Tent Caterpillar. They were everywhere, the boardwalk was covered in frass, the polite word for insect poop, they were even falling on us from the trees! Although they covered with seta, hair-like bristles that sometimes cause serious skin irritation, these caterpillars are harmless to touch. Among the one hundred forty birds that spend all of part of their life at Beidler, are the yellow cuckoos. They sit by the nests of these caterpillars and gleefully strip the bristles off, devouring up to one hundred at a time. When startled by loud noises, such as thunder, they make a croaking sound, giving rise to the nickname rain crows. They lay eggs over a relatively long period of time; often depositing them in the nests of other birds.

On our visit to the Beidler Forest manager Matt Johnson spotted five snakes – three water moccasins and two banded water snakes. To distinguish between them, see if the eyeball is round and therefore a non-venomous water snake rather than the moccasins’ slit-eyed pupil. But that means using binoculars or getting too close for safety!

Much of the Beidler Forest is a swamp – a flooded forest where the water level fluctuates rather dramatically, some areas may occasionally be completely dry. The water doesn’t come from streams or springs but from rainfall draining from the four hundred and thirty thousand acres watershed above Four Holes Swamp, of which Beidler is a part. Think of a swamp as a massive porous surface – rainwater can slowly infiltrate the soil and pollutants – fertilizers, motor oil from roadways, industrial waste, sewage -- are broken down by soil organisms into non-toxic substances. The water level fluctuates with rainfall but inexorably slowly flows across the land, from wetter to drier sites before ending in the Edisto River. After excess rainfall events, that slow passage mitigates flooding of that River and adds cleansed water for the backup supply of Charleston’s drinking water.

Our crew spent a glorious day filming at the Beidler Forest Audubon Center recently, the original portion of which was purchased from the Beidler family in the 1960’s. Francis Beidler was a Chicago businessman who with partner Benjamin Ferguson established the Santee Cypress Lumber Company in eighteen eighty one, purchasing one hundred sixty five thousand acres in central South Carolina. This company was extremely profitable as old growth cypress lumber was highly desirable for building. The timber operations and mills were usually near large “blackwater” creeks to facilitate moving the enormous., ancient cut logs. Sadly, for the country’s economy but ultimately fortunate for the ecosystem, a slump in business in 1915 prompted Mr. Beidler to shut down all his timbering for a time. Eventually, portions of his properties became the Congaree National Park and the Francis Beidler Audubon Center.

The saga of the rampant Bradford pear continues...

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

In many parts of the country, gardeners can’t buy fertilizers that contain phosphorus unless they have soil test results that show the need for that middle number on the fertilizer bag. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are the three nutrients the percentage of each is listed in that order on every fertilizer package. Nitrogen and potassium are both relatively water soluble and seldom are found in soils in high levels. But phosphorus doesn’t move easily downward through the soil profile with rainfall or irrigation and can reach extremely high levels when gardeners don’t follow soil test recommendations. Your local Extension office may not be open to the public, but you can call them or Clemson’s Home and Garden Information Center for directions on how to submit a soil sample directly. Don’t waste money and risk excess nutrients harming rather than helping your plants.

Scalping your lawn has always sounded absolutely horrific to me, as well as the practice of burning. Actually, there are times when those practices can be beneficial but it all has to do with timing. Extension Agent Adam Gore explained that just as warm-season turf is about to come out of dormancy, scalping or burning can remove the insulating now dead grass residue and help reduce thatch build up; which can be a problem particularly on highly-maintained turf. Burning, Gore added, is hard to do correctly and prohibited in many communities. If you decide to scalp, you must catch and remove all the clippings – you can’t use the practice of grass cycling that’s recommended in the normal mowing season. This is a once-a-year procedure for certain situations; there are other solutions for thatch reduction that may be easier for some homeowners.

Adam Gore, Extension Agent in Abbeville, who’s getting his PhD in turf, talked with us recently about not being in a hurry to get your warm-season turfgrass greened up. Although those big box stores have weed and feed conveniently and temptingly located near the checkout stand right now, March and April are one hundred percent not the right months to put out these products. As a matter of fact, there is never a time in South Carolina with warm season turfgrass – Centipede, Bahia, St. Augustine or Bermuda – to apply those two products simultaneously. You’ve missed the window for pre-emergents – that should have been in February and you can harm your lawn if you jump the gun on fertilizer – wait until May, and probably mid-May at that, when the grass is beginning active growth and can actually use those nutrients.

When I’ve been to fancy grocery stores in pandemic days, I’m more prone to impulse buying -- why five bags of almond flour and peculiar jars of condiments? The garden centers at big box stores are masters at product placement – with totally inappropriate displays of weed and feed by their check out points right now. Pre-emergent fertilizers for warm season turf needed to be applied in February – it used to be March -- but climate change has required a readjustment, and warm season turf grass should never never never be fertilized until it warms up – sometime in May depending on where in the state you live. If your turf is stimulated to come out of dormancy early, a late freeze can severely damage it, and inactive turfgrass can’t absorb nutrients so you are just paying for that water-soluble nitrogen to leach away.

The most important thing you can do to improve the quality of your turfgrass is to every year make entries to your calendar. At Clemson’s HGIC, you can find yearly maintenance calendars for both warm-season and cool-season turfgrasses we grow in South Carolina. Most important is a soil test –I know you get tired of hearing that, but different grasses want very different amounts of fertilizer. Centipede grass is often called “poor man’s grass” - I guess these days I should say “poor person’s grass” although I do think men are more likely to be turf addicts than women - as it is harmed by over-fertilization and can survive extended periods of drought and recover. Its main drawback is that it doesn’t take well to heavy foot traffic-- so not a good choice if kids play football or soccer in the front yard.

Clemson Extension’s Home and Garden Information Center each week shares a listing of calls they’ve received, ranked by the topics with the greatest requests for help. Number one, leading the list, is always turf grass. A super-managed lawn, with no flowering, so-called weeds doesn’t feed pollinators, needs regular irrigation, and few lawn mowers and such have anti-pollution devices on them. That said, we all need a small turf area for picnics and slip and slides (just about the most fun item every invented) and places to roll around with the dog. If you want people to admire your house, a smaller lawn with thoughtfully chosen and artfully arranged trees and shrubs encourages people to slow down to get a better look than just a wide-open-to-the-world carpet of grass with your house plopped down in the middle.

We occasionally have had parties watching chimney swifts descend into a towering chimney right on the same part of the house where female mother bats emerge to feed -- they look like mercury oozing out between the clapboards. – both activities happening at the same time as dusks falls. When we can safely be together again, we’ll return to hosting these viewing parties where we serve margaritas. I’ve found that bats are the pollinators for the agave plants from which tequila is made. They migrate following the progression of plants coming into flower. Commercial growers have started using vegetatively propagated cuttings drastically reducing the number of flowering agaves and limiting food for bats. Now you can buy bat friendly tequila brands produced by companies that dedicate certain acreage to plants that are allowed to flower and support these beneficial flying mammals.

Clemson ecology experts T J Savareno and Ben Powell say that having some untidy parts of our yards makes a home friendly to all types of wildlife – from snakes that eat rats, to insects that pollinate our food crops, and for bats that eat harmful agricultural pests and annoying and potentially disease carrying mosquitoes. Bats International says if you can safely leave a dead tree, the space between the bark and the wood is perfect for a bat to squeeze into for shelter or rest. In a naturalized part of our yard, we have a large dogwood that’s died; it won’t cause any trouble when it finally falls and in the mean time I hope it will be a place where bats will squeeze under the textured bark and find a protected space from which they’ll emerge to eat pesky mosquitoes.

DNR’s Heritage sites are an overlooked treasure these days when being outdoors is a safe way to get a break from our restricted lifestyles. Recently, we visited Calhoun County’s Congaree Bluffs Heritage Preserve –saw three other people. There was a bat box there that was on pole maybe fourteen feet or so up in the air as bats need space to drop after leaving their roost before they can take flight. We were puzzled at the dark green color the box was painted – it seemed like it would be way too hot in the summer. But it turns out bats, even crowded together, need a great deal of warmth. Sometimes bat boxes do get too hot, however, rocket boxes which are more expensive than other styles, let the bats move around to take advantage of the differences in temperature that occur.

Our 190 year old house is not only home to us, but at certain times of the year to migrating chimney swifts and to bats, as a box soffit under the second story eaves serves as nurse colony. In spring, female bats enter through many of the cracks and cranies in this aging wooden house, spending their days nursing their babies, and leaving at dusk to hunt for insects – part if what makes them important parts of our ecology. They leave a small scattering of guano near an open window that may be part of how they enter. At the end of summer, I wear a mask and using a vacuum with removable filter bag clean it up. From my reading, histoplasmosis is a danger with deep piles of guano – not the cup or so on my attic floor.

My brother who lives to hunt, work in his woodshop and do outdoorsy things, got himself appointed to the “Homeowners Ground’s committee” where he had a beach apartment. Surrounded by ladies who came with girl friends for bridge weekends, his sole goal was to convince them to stop insisting that the maintenance crew remove palmetto leaves as soon as they started to turn brown, while half the leaf was still green. Not only does this practice harm the trees by removing photosynthesizing material which upsets the balance between the roots and the leaves, but it can limit places important to bat health. Many bats roost, have babies or even hibernate in trees. The left over petioles and aging palmetto leaves provide just the right shelter and habitat for certain endangered bats and improves the health of the palmetto trees to boot.

White nose syndrome is an introduced fungal infection that’s exerting huge pressure on certain of our bat species. Some bats require a long and deep hibernation when their body functions slow down dramatically to conserve resources. When infected with this fungus, which concentrates on their faces, giving a white appearance to their nose, it irritates the bats, causing them to wake up and go outside looking for food. Of course, during winter in the upstate, hunting insects is a futile task. At Stumphouse Tunnel, the number of tri-colored bats dropped from 400 to thirty. In the past few years, however, Researcher Susan Loeb and her students, are seeing a slight rise in numbers. The bats are roosting closer to the front of the cave where the temperatures are lower and perhaps that helps keep the bats in deep hibernation.

Flying around all night is pretty exhausting for bats and many of them roost for periods of time to conserve energy. Perch and wait is a strategy to sit, or rather hang upside down, until an insect flies by. Bats also use their incredible hearing to locate insects that are walking around on crop or tree leaves and then swoop down and pluck them off the actual plants. This ability means that caterpillars and other larval forms of insects that don’t fly or even adults that seldom fly are a large part of bat diets, even ants on the ground are eaten as bats are incredibly maneuverable in flight. Bats value in pesticide use reduction is easier to measure in agricultural crops but Susan Loeb, US Forestry Agent stationed at Clemson, said they are equally important in eating harmful insects in our woodlands.