- Welcome back to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today we've got a brand new episode and we're digging up our underwear that we buried 60 days ago to see what the soil microorganisms have done to it.

We then talk with Dr.

Charles Fontenier as they research an alternative to Bermuda grass that might be a little bit more native and biodiverse in your lawn.

It's a plant called Frogfruit.

Then finally, we look at another research area that is brand new called Agrivoltaics.

Stay tuned to find out more.

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Remember that time that I buried underwear in our garden?

Well, it's been 60 days and it's time to dig up the results and see what we have.

So the.

If you remember, this was an NRCS challenge, soil your undies.

And the idea is that you get 100% cotton underwear and you bury them about four to six inches down for 60 days, and you just leave them there.

So you want to kind of bury them horizontal and you let them lie underneath the somewhat undisturbed soil.

You try to dig it up as a slab and then lay it back down so that you don't disturb it too much.

And we'll see what microorganisms are feeding on this underwear.

So the results, here we have, we started out with the shade garden.

So this is the shade garden here at the botanic garden.

This place has been gardened for over 30 years.

We've got a lot of organic matter built up into it.

And you can see that there's not much left of the undies anymore.

In fact, we typically expect to see the elastic waistband, so that's a good indicator of where you buried it in case you're having a hard time finding it.

And what's kind of what's surprising to me is that we have also the seams.

So the thread that they used that didn't break down either.

So here we've got, I, I doubt it was cotton thread.

It was probably some sort of synthetic thread.

So you can see they ate everything.

So we've got plenty of microorganisms in our soil there.

The next location that we buried it was at the CNG field at the student farm.

So the CNG is a certified, naturally grown and they use organic practices over there in that one acre plot.

And we buried, and you can see also, again, a lot of great microorganisms as they fed on the 100% cotton underwear.

And then finally, we went on to campus and we buried some in the putting green, the little practice putting green that they have there.

So this is in a very fine ultra short Bermuda grass that is used for a putting green.

And you can see while there's been some irrigation on it I should say all three of these had irrigation throughout the 60 days over the summer months.

But we have a fair amount of material still left on this underwear.

Not usable obviously, but you can see that we've got a lot of 100% cotton still left for those microorganisms to break down.

And in fact, what's kind of surprising is you can even see where there was folds that it didn't get buried completely flat.

So this just kind of gives you a general indicator of how much microorganisms you have in your soil.

So we obviously are seeing more in our shade garden and our vegetable garden than we're seeing on the putting green, which isn't too surprising.

I'm not sure if they've used any extra fertilizers and things like that, but I would suspect they might have.

This might be a great combination also to apply with a traditional routine soil test.

So you can kind of check your pH to kind of know if that's influencing your microbes as well.

So we don't know what microbes we're dealing with, but we know that they're eating that organic matter.

And you could check that as well as to how much organic matter you have in your soil.

So this was just a brief update on the Soil Your Undies Challenge that we did here, and we'd love for you to share any results that you have on our social media.

Today we're out at some OSU turf research plots, and joining me is Dr.

Charles Fontanier with the Turfgrass Group.

So tell us a little bit about some research because some of this looks like turf grass, some of it looks a little non-traditional.

- Right.

So, you know, the OSU turf team spends a lot of its time working with traditional turf grasses like Bermuda grass, or in this case we have some buffalo grass on these plots.

But we, we also acknowledge that there are other ground covers available that can serve as what we call, might call a turf in some ways.

And so these lawn alternative plants have really been a growing interest area for us to kind of compliment some of the conventional turf research we do.

- So we, we have this idea that a front yard is supposed to be this monocropped, you know.

Often Bermuda grass around here lawn, right?

That needs a lot of input and maintenance, but there is a shift going towards more pollinator, nectar plants, and maybe a little more low maintenance.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you've selected here?

- Yeah.

So by far, one of the top preferences is low input.

And so that's definitely always something, but but increasingly also looking at other ecosystem functions like servicing our pollinator pollinator insects with, with nectar resources.

So we have at this location a particular group of plants most commonly called frog fruit.

Okay.

Has a number of other names you might see in the internet or, or commercial trade.

And so some of those might include lipia, you might see carapia.

We also sometimes see one called turkey tangle fog fruit.

And so a lot of different names, but in general, it's a, it's a native plant, has tolerance to mowing and some traffic.

And so it, it really fits that lawn alternative category very well for us.

And in terms of its pollinator resources, it's particularly desirable because it has a really long window of, of flowering.

And so it may not always be a pollinator's favorite flower, but it's around really in some of those times of year when other plants aren't available.

And so has tremendous potential for us in, in, in that, in that regard.

- Okay.

And so you've got your buffalo grass, it's sort of your controlled standard here.

Right.

And then you've got a couple of different varieties or types of - - Right.

So.

Parkers?

You know, when we're looking at what we call new plants, if you will, for different horticultural purposes sometimes there are varieties on the market.

Someone has developed an improvement or selected a certain flower color.

But a lot of times it's also wild types.

And so a lot of these lawn alternatives started off as maybe a weed species.

And, and really that's a good start because if it's a weed, it's pretty well adapted, usually hard to get rid of.

And so if we can culture that and find something beneficial, that beet's trying to control it all the time.

And so we have here a, a local a local accession, a plant that we collected in, in Oklahoma.

So that's truly a native version.

And then we have two commercial varieties.

One's called New Pink and one's called New White.

And they're from a group out in California that is marketing out to that, to that customer base - Already.

Okay.

What are, what are you seeing between those three selections of the frog fruit?

- Well, these were planted as plugs in April of this year.

So that would spend now about three months or so of growing.

And we're seeing that you know, the California or the, the varieties are a little more smaller plants, finer leaf texture, maybe not quite as fast as spreading to establish, but still very good and establishes readily.

Put out quite a bit more flowers, I would say, than say the, the native variety.

And maybe stays a little shorter thus far.

- Okay.

So there might be some appealing characteristics to that, but it might take a little longer to get coverage, right?

- Right.

Maybe a little longer coverage and, and really, you know, the true test for some of these is will it survive our winter?

Will it survive our summer?

And so we're looking at doing this over a couple of years.

And maybe the California varieties do well, maybe one survives, maybe one doesn't.

And we can learn from that and see if there's potential for our, for our environment.

- Okay.

So and how are you kind of comparing that to the buffalo grass then?.

- Well, so, you know, we, we always feel the need to have something as a standard.

And so you talked about these are supposed to be kind of low input, some drought resistance and, and native.

And so buffalo grass is kind of, I think, the natural fit.

And so it's very capable of spreading and covering.

And, and we saw that in this experiment that it's probably the fastest to spread, which is what we would normally expect, I think.

And we'll watch it to see how it survives drought, how it survives comes out and how green it is in spring or in fall.

And try to, you know, compare it to, you know, something people know, right?.

So they have a good feel for what buffalo grass does.

How do these plants compare?

And some of those normal turf attributes they look for.

- O- obviously you had to get them established, but is there any maintenance that you're actually, or inputs that you're doing on it now that it's established?

Are you, you're going to start mowing it, but are you fertilizing it or watering it at all?

- So yeah, so, so great question.

During establishment, we did use fertilizer just to kind of make sure we got a good establishment going.

The plan is to shift now to have a couple different fertilizer regimes.

One of those being no fertilizer once established, the other with kind of a moderate fertility and then, and one maybe a high fertility.

And so we'll be able to see, does that impact, you know, mowing requirements?

Does that impact flower intensity?

So right now it is irrigated still as we're still getting a few more to finish growing in.

And once they're fully grown in, we'll also look at changing irrigation to having a what we hopefully will have is a, a zero irrigated and then one that's more of a, a typical, I'd say set it, set it and forget it type one inch per week program.

Okay.

And then, like you said, mowing, we haven't started mowing, but that's another piece.

One of the big things about the pollinator services is it's not always about how, what plants you have as much as can we back off on mowing?

And so can we mow taller?

Can we mow less often?

That lowers the input level, but it also could help with the flowers and the pollinators there.

So we'll look at some different mowing regimes.

- And, and you said you have one native selection that you used here, and that just happened to be the one you kind of picked, I think at the time.

Are you looking at a bigger picture of maybe what's the best selection around the state here?

- Sure.

So so Dr.

Dennis Martin and I are working together on this, on this project, and he's spent the last few years collecting quite a few frog fruit plants from around the state.

And so he's kind of looked at them on his own over the, over the last couple winters and summers to see what maybe survives and looks good.

And so that's the one he kind of picked for us for this trial.

But he's got 12 or 13 or so in another trial here on site where we're trying to do a little more refined comparison to see, okay, are there differences from these all frog fruit, all from Oklahoma?

Can we find differences in how fast they grow?

They're flowering survival, all those sort of things and, and see, can we make an improved selection from that, from that group of plants as well?

- So obviously, a frog fruit is just one plant that somebody could use in a biodiverse lawn, right?

You're not looking to switch a whole Bermuda grass lawn to a monocrop of frog fruit necessarily.

- Right.

So, you know, in, in research, at least initially, we're trying to look at these frog fruit plants largely as a monostan, but that's just so we can get a baseline for what those plants are.

Ideally, I think in many situations, folks will want to incorporate it into some sort of mixed ward that includes grasses and, and a variety of different flowering forbs.

And, and certainly this has potential to fill a, a good, a good spot in that mix simply because of its long flowering window and, and ability to spread and fill and, and, and do all those things that maybe some other plants that are more, maybe more bunch type, maybe have a shorter flowering window.This could, this could kind of mesh well with, with some of those other species.

- Well, Dr.

Fontanier, thank you for sharing this with us, and it's great to see some of these biodiverse options that might be coming available.

- Yeah.

Well, thanks for having me and, and happy to share what we're doing here.

And always looking out for the next Bermuda grass, but, but certainly also interested in trying to service as, as many areas of the turf industry as we can.

- Thank you.

- Our 2026 Oklahoma proven tree is the river birch, or bechula Nigra.

We're standing here next to several trees here planted on campus.

This is a wonderful tree for the landscape.

It's actually a native species to the eastern half of the United States.

We are, Oklahoma basically is on its very western range of its na- natural habitat with it being largely found in the eastern half of the state.

It typically is found growing near wet areas along the banks of rivers and streams and in flood plains.

So it's actually very tolerant of prolonged flooding.

It will tolerate clay soils and, and brief droughts.

So it's not an extremely drought tolerant plant.

So in the really hot, dry parts of the summer, you want to be prepared to provide some supplemental irrigation.

But this is a fast-growing tree.

It can reach 40 to 70 foot high and just about as wide.

They are often sold as multi-trunk trees, but you can train them or they can be trained into a single trunk as well.

The leaves on this tree are bright green in the summer and a bright yellow in the fall.

But the real wonderful and exciting feature of this tree is the exfoliating papery bark that you see on these trees.

This one has kind of a creamy white bark, but there's other forms that have beautiful white bark with salmon colors and bright rich brown, cinnamon brown colors even one that has kind of an orangey bark.

So that's the real fun feature about this tree.

So the ones we are standing with here, this is duraheat exceptionally drought tolerant plant heat tolerant and very disease resistant.

There's also a varigated one and a weeping form.

And there's a there's one called City Slicker, which is really a nice selection for Oklahoma developed by Carl Whitcomb.

It has a really nice white bark.

It is considered a little bit more drought tolerant and actually a little more alkaline tolerance.

So it tolerates those alkaline soils a little bit better.

And another one that Dr.

Whitcomb released is the one that's called Orange Bark Special, which has that really nice orangey bark.

So excellent shade tree for the landscape.

It is great for wildlife in the landscape.

And with the wonderful bark and the nice bright green foliage during the summer and the yellow fall color this would be a great choice for you.

- Today, we're here at the student food plots that are just north of the botanic garden.

And joining me is Ali Odatala.

And today we're talking about agrovoltaics.

And that's a new word for a lot of people.

Tell us what is agrovoltaics.

- So agrovoltaics refers to the dual use of land for agricultural purposes and the generating of solar energy.

- Okay.

So there's a lot of solar panels that are being discussed as a new energy source.

And what, why are they merging those two areas, agriculture and solar panels?

- So as interest has grown in renewable energy sources, so solar energy generation, we've seen more large scale solar farms popping up.

But the thing with solar farms is they require a lot of open space.

Because you want the solar panels to have as much sunlight as possible to maximize the amount of energy you're generating.

So to try to get some more use out of the land, people have proposed that we include agricultural production as well.

So things like growing crops and also livestock.

- So they're kind of looking for that same wide open field that agriculture is currently in.

And so there is some research and you've done some kind of lit review research on this before you started your project.

Tell us kind of what that literature is looking like.

- Well, I mainly focused on reading literature surrounding stolen ACE crops because in our agrivoltaic system, we've been growing peppers.

Okay.

So I read a lot of papers about peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes.

But a lot of countries also focus on a variety of crops.

Kind of what you're going to use in your agrivoltaic system will depend on your geographic area.

And also the needs of the specific crop you want to focus on.

- Okay.

So you've got peppers that are growing under, and this is kind of a little demonstration plot.

This is a summer research project.

- So - Tell us kind of your setup in your research plan here.

- So what we wanted to look at with our project was how the physical presence of the solar panels would affect the growth and production of Madhat or pepper plants.

Okay.

So we tried to maximize the amount of plants that we could put around and underneath the solar panels to see all the different effects that the panels might have on the crop growth, as well as different climate variables.

- Okay.

And so you've got some different rain gauges out here to capture the rainfall in the different areas.

And you've got madhatter peppers surrounding this as well as planted underneath there.

And I mean, observationally, I can see a difference.

So what, what are you finding with your research?

- So with the growth, there's a very clear difference in the plant height especially.

And we've noticed around the third week of growth is really when the difference became more present with the plants underneath the solar panels really increasing in plant height compared to those outside of the panels.

- Okay.

So they're actually appreciating a little bit of that shade, huh?.

And they, and they look like they're a little bit darker green too.

Are you doing anything with fertilizer or what's the treatment?

Are you treating them all the same essentially other than some are under the panels?.

- Yep.

So we are keeping everything consistent with the amount of irrigation and water they get.

The main difference is just the amount of sunlight they get.

- Okay.

Well, it's looking good.

So tell me a little bit, you're, you're doing this as part of the REEU program, which is Research and Extension Experience for Undergraduates.

Is that correct?.

Tell me a little bit about that program you're involved in.

- Yep.

So the REEU program is a 10-week program for undergraduates that allows them to get some research and extension experience.

So the students work underneath a faculty mentor and they get a research project that they'll work on for the 10 weeks.

And then at the end we have a poster presentation as well as a 15-minute presentation that we give over our research.

- All right.

I know that's coming up pretty soon for you.

Yeah.

And then - You're back - To school.

Tell me, as an undergraduate, where are you at?

You're here at OSU?.

And what are you studying?

- So I'm going to be a senior and I'm in the OSU Teach program.

So I'm studying biology and then secondary education with a science concentration.

- Okay.

So why, why did you want to do a horticulture research project?

- I really just wanted to increase my experience with research.

And I've always been interested in horticulture, and I though this would be a good opportunity to get some more experience with that.

- And what have you thought of the program so far?

- It's been really great.

I've, I've really enjoyed it.

I've learned a lot of new information, gained a lot of really great experiences that I think are going to be beneficial in the future.

- All right.

And you've gotten to do a lot of other stuff, not just always out - Here doing - Research, right?.

You want to share a little bit about some of the other things you've done in this program?.

- Yep.

So as a whole group in the program, because there are other students that are doing it, and they're focusing on different things, different research projects.

But we come together as a group and we've gone on some field trips.

We've done workshop days where we've learned about different things.

And then with my faculty mentor, we've done the Plants and Bugs summer camp and Grandparent University.

So I've got some experience doing summer camps and doing educational activities, which going into education I've found really beneficial.

- Very good.

Well, thank you so much.

And thanks for sharing this kind of new frontier in this research with us.

Thank you.

And as always, if you have a question about today's show or any of the other shows, feel free to reach out to your local county OSU extension office or leave us a comment on social media.

There are many great horticulture activities this time of year.

Be sure and consider some of these events in the weeks ahead.

Join us next week as we take a look at how to deal with some of those pesky garden critters right here on Oklahoma Gardening.

Well, - They worked.

- I didn't think they would do it in 60 days.

I thought you had to - - Nine months.

- Yeah.

To find out more information about show topics as well as recipes, videos, articles, fact sheets, and other resources, including a directory of local extension offices, be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

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Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the division of agricultural sciences and natural resources at Oklahoma State University.

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We would like to thank our generous underwriters, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, and Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

Additional support is also provided by the Tulsa Garden Club, Greenleaf Nursery, and the Garden Debut plants, the Tulsa Garden Center, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, and the Tulsa Herb Society.