(light music) (upbeat classical music) - Welcome to "Oklahoma Gardening."

As a new school year begins, we visit OSU Landscape Services as they put the finishing touches on the landscape around new Agriculture Hall.

David shares a 2024 Oklahoma Proven plant.

It's not too late to start a fall garden.

Lou Anella gives us a hint of what's coming this fall.

And we learn more about the pollinator garden at the College of the Muscogee Nation.

(upbeat classical music continues) Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing.

"Oklahoma Gardening" is also a proud partner with Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

Shape Your Future provides resources for Oklahomans to make the healthy choice the easy choice.

(upbeat classical music continues) I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

(upbeat classical music continues) We're back here at the student farm.

(upbeat classical music continues) I wanna share with you a tropical plant that you might find in some Oklahoma landscapes.

(upbeat classical music continues) It's important to know which plants we are dealing with so that we can continue to maintain them successfully for years to come.

(upbeat classical music continues) Today we are back here at the, what was the New Frontiers Ag Hall and now is officially known as Ag Hall.

If you're familiar with the old Ag Hall across the street, that has been renamed to Legacy Hall.

Joining me again is Nick Ouellette, who is with Landscape Services and has been responsible for installing this design here.

And we're finally at the point that it's starting to get prettier out here.

(laughing) - Yeah, we've reached that crucial point that we're finally getting a little lipstick, I would say- - Yeah.

- On the design, get it all kinda planted here.

So you finally get to see some final touches starting to happen, where we put the mulch in and get the plants in, a little bit of rock mulch, and wood mulch.

So you'll probably see a few of our crew out here today kind of going through that process, laying out the plants per design, and then planting those in the soil conditions that we talked about in the last segment.

- So let's talk first about the front of the building.

It's a little more formal, 'cause that's the main entrance, right?

- [Nick] Yes, we have a very cohesive type of landscape that goes down the Monroe Street.

So we tried to mimic our landscape design that we have for Ag Hall to kind of balance the rest of the landscape down Monroe Street.

- And then back here, though, it's kind of a little more detailed, I would say.

You got some interesting things back here.

- That's exactly right.

Our front entrance is very formal.

It's got spaces for events.

We've designed that to hold events, kind of be able to greet students, the front entrance.

And then when you come to this east side, it's got a little bit more on the design to where it's more inviting with the plant material.

It's kind of a little bit more native, a little bit more natural, inviting atmosphere, I would say, to kind of hang out.

- Right.

- [Nick] So we have a little plaza area, nice big pathways that just kinda create that, and the micro-environment is perfect for us on that.

It creates so we have just enough sunlight, just enough shade to really kind of, I think, provide that hang out space.

- And I think it's interesting, 'cause you know, as a homeowner, a lotta times we do that with our own home.

We have that area where we can play soccer or have our activities with our lawn, which is what you have in the front, but then you have that unique detail area also.

And one of the things that you're doing down below, let's talk a little bit that green wall.

- Well, the green wall is making progress.

We're definitely putting the final touches around the design of the hardscape that would be there, the plaza spaces.

We actually have site furnishings also scheduled to go in this week.

So that includes benches and tables, that campus standards that we have.

And then the most exciting part is the actual living wall, the plants that'll be vertical.

- Right.

- [Nick] We have those scheduled to go in this week as well.

So everything is really coming together, and we're excited that we only have three more days until the start of school.

(Casey laughing) So it's here and we're gonna have that looking just perfect for 'em as they come in.

- So obviously, a lot of planning has gone into this, but it really is crucial to get the plant in the ground correctly.

Let's talk a little bit about how you're laying out your plants and getting them in the ground.

- Well, it starts off by following our landscape design.

So during that design process, we strategically placed plants that would grow to maturity.

So they would reach maturity.

So the spacings on the plants today look like maybe they're too far apart, but they're kinda small and they'll grow.

So the spacings for those are kind of been intended maybe about three years.

I would say most landscapes, it takes about three years to kinda start reaching that full maturity or close to it.

So that's what you're gonna see today.

- Okay, so you've got some one-gallons and different and some larger trees that will get larger next to this three-story building.

But as we know, gardens take a little bit of time.

And if you had gone the other way, I mean, it would've been a nightmare as far as maintenance, right?

Like.

- No, that's exactly right.

So there are certain plants where we have them tighter together 'cause they're meant to be as act as a ground cover or filler, and that outcompetes, then, the weeds.

- Okay.

- And we also have other ones where, in the same type of plant, where maybe they are spaced quite a bit further apart, where it's providing more of an architectural form of the plant and design.

So there's a lotta reasons that we kinda space our plants out or kinda keep 'em tighter, but it has to do with kinda the maintenance of it.

So it all depends on kinda how we intend that space to be for the maintenance, kinda helps depict how we target plant our plants.

- And I think that's good information for homeowners, 'cause a lotta times, when they have a new install or something, it might not look like their finished product.

But we all know that gardens take a little while.

- And of course budget plays into that too, right?

(laughs) Smaller plant is- - The budget.

The budget.

- A cheaper plant too.

- That's exactly right.

So we have to rule out all favors, take everything into accountability on that.

And unfortunately a lot of times budget does play a huge role in it.

But it's important for us to always look at, you know, the design intent to where it's gonna save us in the long run, not only just on the budget part, but on time too.

So we have a certain ground coverage as you'll see here too.

That's a little bit different approach.

We're using a lot of rock mulch, and that's helping us in areas that it's not inconducive to get lawnmower equipment or staff in there to constantly, you know, mulch it or, you know, do weekly maintenance where we can do some rock mulch in there.

Also makes it a little more easier maybe for pedestrians to cross through and a few things like that.

So this building's kind of got a little bit more of that.

I've seen all design, the cities, Oklahoma, Tulsa, a lot of our larger metropolitan areas kind of using a lot more of the rock mulches too.

So you'll notice a little bit of that here today as well.

- All right, well, thank you so much for sharing this with us.

And I know as people start coming this way more with students and also football, that they're gonna see a fantastic landscape really take form here.

- Appreciate the opportunity.

(bright gentle music) (bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) - Our Oklahoma Proven Shrub for 2024 is this shrub right here.

This is a great plant.

It has actually been around for decades, but is kind of an underutilized species in my opinion.

And this is the Contorted Filbert, or sometimes called Harry Lauder's walking stick.

Corylus avellana contorta.

This is a really cool shrub because of its curly, twisty stems as well as the leaves.

So you can see even the leaves kind of look a little bit curly and twisted, kind of droop a little bit.

So some people might, you know, initially look at it and think it's, you know, got a problem.

But this is actually its natural habit.

But the prize, you know, feature of this is those curly, twisty stems, which are really more noticeable, of course, during the winter time after all the leaves fall.

Now this plant can get up to eight, 10 foot tall.

It is pretty tough.

Once you get it established, it tolerates a wide variety of soil conditions.

It's cold-hearty throughout Oklahoma.

You just really need well-drained soils.

Now this form of it that curly, twisty stem form of it, the contorted form, is often grafted onto a non-contorted root stock.

So if you have suckers that pop up that are not curly and twisty, then you'll want to remove those.

However, some growers actually grow them on their own root stocks, so you may get curly, twisty suckers as well.

In the winter, not only are the stems nice to look at, but in the late winter, the male flowers, which are catkins, will be kind of a yellow gray color, and they will be hanging from the plant, and they will look really nice too.

Occasionally, and I've never really seen nuts on these plants before, but actually ours is producing a few hazelnuts, even though this not grown for them and typically don't grow very many.

Now there are also a couple of cultivars that this plant comes in with reddish purple or burgundy colored leaves.

There's Red Dragon and Red Majestic.

They're a little bit smaller, a little more compact.

So growing to about six foot tall.

Red Majestic actually has the purplish leaves and is slightly weeping in its habit as well.

So if you're looking for a cool, a fun, unique shrub for your garden space, this might be something to consider.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) - I just wanna give everybody a quick reminder, if you haven't started your fall garden yet, it's not too late.

Now it might be a little too late on a few of your crops that need a little bit longer to harvest, such as cauliflower and broccoli.

But some easy ones to grow are lettuce, beets, radishes, and carrots.

So if you are over your garden, it just hasn't been the successful year that you were hoping for, try some of these simple root crops.

Radishes, beets, carrots, like I said, and leaf lettuce.

They're easy way to go ahead and enjoy the remainder of our season here, and they're really relatively easy to get started.

So we just have some seeds that are leftover from this spring and this is just a lettuce mix.

- And I'm just going to sprinkle these, actually, all throughout here.

If you wanted to do, you could do furrows and kind of plant them in lines, but we're just gonna kind of scatter these around here.

Now, we might want to come back, if you've noticed that you've sort of seeded these a little bit heavily, you might wanna come back and thin those, especially on some of those root crops, such as, like I mentioned, carrots and beets and radishes, because they're gonna need some more space to actually grow.

So, if you have two seeds that are right next to each other, they're not gonna be able to really fill out that root like you're wanting to harvest later on in the season.

So, we're just gonna (seeds rustling) sprinkle these in.

Now, the big thing, obviously, it is still blazing hot out here.

We are in mid-August, but you have until mid-September to get a lot of these in the ground, and take advantage of some of those cooler days.

They are starting to happen.

We're starting to have a few more showers and that will help keep these seeds wet.

However, during those hot days, you might wanna go ahead and make sure that you are keeping this moist because that's gonna ensure that that germination is successful.

Now, because these seeds are so small, we don't even actually have to bury 'em.

I'm just gonna kind of pat the soil, the potting soil here, over the seedlings.

Now the big thing is, is you wanna make sure that they do stay moist.

We are starting to get a few rain showers, but make sure you are keeping them moist in between on those hot days to allow for that germination.

There is nothing sweeter than being able to harvest some fresh carrots or some fresh lettuce from your garden this fall.

(bright music) For more information on fall gardening, check out this fact sheet.

(bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music fades) - Hi, I am Lou Anella, the director of the Botanic Garden at Oklahoma State University, and we're out at our mum plots, and I'd like to speak to you today about the production we do of these mums.

This is one of the largest fundraisers that the Botanic Garden has.

We have a sale in September, this year it'll be September 27th, and then Garden Fest will be September 28th, and we produce the mums that we sell at that sale ourselves.

And so we thought we'd speak to you about how that's done.

So, the first thing that happens is that we purchase these plugs.

And, so, this is how the mums come to us.

And by a plug, we mean just a rooted cutting.

And so we buy these rooted cuttings and buy them by the thousands, and then we pot them up.

And what's really fun is that we get all of our volunteers to help us with this project.

So, the volunteers and the students all get together.

And this year we planted about 2,400 mums, and we did that in an hour and a half.

So, it really is a day that everybody looks forward to.

We have a lot of fun doing it, and we get it done really, really quickly.

So that's great.

So, we've been growing these for almost a month now, and you can see the difference in the size and how well they've done.

So, to get them to this size, we do quite a few things.

And one of those things is to drip irrigate them.

So, the entire system, all 2,400 mums, are on drip irrigation.

So, we have these little stakes that go into the pots, and once or twice a day, we set the irrigation controller to come on and drip irrigate these pots.

We can't leave the irrigation controller on automatic, we have to kind of manage it manually because if the pots get too wet, then they can get fungal diseases and the plants will start to dry.

And then of course, if they get too dry, they can wilt and die, as well.

So, we're out here two or three times a day, checking these mums, trying to decide whether or not they need to be watered.

And we very often do that by lifting the pots and seeing how heavy they are.

We have a fertilizer injector, and so we can also fertilize these plants.

Each time that the pots get watered, they get just a little bit of fertilizer, and that's controlled by our fertilizer injector.

If we do have problems with the fungus or the root rot, we can put a fungicide in with the fertilizer and try to get rid of that fungus problem, as well.

So those are some of the production issues, and we just keep watching these guys, making sure that they're growing on a nice projection.

And then in September, when they start to form small buds, flower buds, this year we're gonna put a net over them to try to hold the plants together.

Sometimes mums get too big and they break apart, you know, when you try to plant them, or even try to just bring them home.

So this year we're gonna try putting a net over the top so that we can grow nice, beautiful, large mums, but without them breaking apart.

So we're excited about that.

So, really, mother nature takes care of the rest.

We just monitor it a couple times a day, make sure the water's appropriate, make sure the fertilizer's appropriate.

Sometimes we turn the fertilizer off to give them a rest.

- Make sure there aren't fungal diseases.

The only other really big problem we have are caterpillars.

And so we spray them with BT, which is an organic insecticide, and that takes care of the caterpillars very, very well.

But, you can see if they're doing beautifully, they really have nice shape already.

In the old days, we used to have to trim them.

You'd have to trim mums to cut the flower buds off, so that you'd get a nice rounded plant blooming in the fall.

We don't have to do that anymore.

The genetics of the mums have been changed so that all the small young flower buds abort and then only the flower buds for the fall stay.

So that's a huge labor saver.

So, we hope you'll come out to the botanic garden in the fall, September 27th, September 28th, we'll have all these guys for sale, plus a couple truckloads of pumpkins, and we hope to see you then.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - We are here at the College of Muskogee Nation, just outside of Okmulgee.

And joining me is Brandon Gibson, who is with the Euchee Butterfly Farm and also the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- So you're a botanist.

And we're gonna talk about some of the pollinator plants that you have here, it looks like.

- Yeah, yeah, we got a lot of good stuff blooming right now.

A lot of different color, which I like.

So that's something that we factor in when we do a lot of these pollinator planting, is that we want the widest swath of color bloom times, because we're not just planting one single flower for one particular butterfly.

We need to cover the entire ecosystem, essentially, and so that's what we're kind of doing here.

And we got a really nice tobacco plant here.

This is Nicotiana tabacum.

This is a cultivated tobacco.

It's an annual, and so it's an annual, but it acts pretty much like a perennial because of how many seeds the stain will produce, the thousands, and thousands, and thousands of seeds.

- [Host] So, be careful where you plant it, right?

- [Brandon] Kind of, yeah, yeah.

I like it a lot, but- - [Host] But it's got so many tubular flowers, so you know that's gonna be a great pollinator plant, too.

- Absolutely, hummingbirds go crazy over this, a lot of butterflies.

I even see a lot of the leafcutter bees, they'll burrow their way into the top, and so they're even utilizing those flowers, the bees that don't have that long proboscis, essentially, but they're still able to get nectar from it.

I really like this plant, even though it's not technically an Oklahoma native.

It's a really great plant for, if you're a tomato gardener, you ever get those tomato horn worms all over your tomatoes.

They love this, instead of the tomatoes.

- [Host] Oh, okay, so it's gonna be like a trap plant for them.

- Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

And so we have all these big, old, fat caterpillars all over these, and the moss look really pretty, and so we don't want to neglect those moss either.

And so providing food and sort of bait plants to where we can coexist.

And a nice little garden setting is mainly what I use this plant for.

- Well, it's already kind of late into the summer, and you've got a lot blooming still, which is impressive, including this cardinal flower.

- Yeah, this is one of my favorite plants.

This is definitely a staple plant that we grow every single year.

And this particular plant is from Osage County out near the tallgrass prairie area.

So I think Pawhuska.

And that's another big point about what we do for our organization, is that I can tell you exactly where in Oklahoma all of these plants were collected from natively.

And so the cardinal flower, like I said, is from Pawhuska area.

The blue vervain, that is from Tulsa County.

The cup plants is from Mooreland, Oklahoma.

And this is one of my favorite plants.

It's another staple that we grow at the farm every single year.

The scientific name would be Silphium perfoliatum.

And that perfoliatum part of the species name is actually telling us quite a bit about the plant.

So if you look at the stem of the plant, the leaves will actually fully encompass around the stalk.

And so that's perfoliatum.

And so in botanical terms, perfoliatum means wrapping around that stem, and so that's where it's getting its name from a cup plant, because after a rain, you can go and look at that stem and there will be literally a cup of water there.

And so I've seen birds use that and utilize it to get a drink of water.

And so it's not only a great nectar plant, but it's also a great plant just for birds to get some natural water, right?

- And that's fascinating 'cause a lot of times, we think that a plant is just utilized for the pollinator aspect of it, but therefore it's holding water form as well.

- Right, right, yeah.

And so there's so many different great relationships between a lot of these native plants and the pollinators that is really easy to sometimes just walk by real quick.

Looking at the tiny sweat beads that are pollinating the frog fruit back there, they're utilizing those frog fruit flowers because morphologically, they're not able to utilize something as, say, a tobacco flower.

And so it's important, again, to have not only different colors, but different sizes of flowers because we're trying to service all of these pollinators, not just monarchs.

Not that we don't love monarchs, but we can do a greater overall effort if we can encompass everybody in the entire picture, so... - Absolutely.

So we know they're doing well here in Oklahoma.

They're not just said to be native to here.

- Yeah, yeah, so all of our seed banks and the plants that we provide, they're all natively collected from Oklahoma.

We don't order any of our stuff.

So if someone like an elder comes to me and is looking for some medicinal plant, I just pretty much gotta figure out where it's at in the world, and go and collect it, and then propagate that for them.

And then we give them nice little gardens like this, so where they can collect their own seeds and we can show them how to actually grow it out 'cause there is some finicky processes with some of these native plants, such as the cardinal flower named sunlight, which a lot of people don't.

- Think about that.

Some seeds will actually need exposure to sunlight rather than what we've been taught growing up, where you always bury a seed and then you water it, but some of these will actually do need sunlight.

And so, during the end of the season, we're gonna come through and spread out some more of this cardinal flour, probably spread some around the ponds around here.

And so, just trying to make this more and more robust, because it's a beautiful plant, I like it a lot.

- And this is just the first season, right?

- Yes, yes.

And so, all of these were grown from seed this year.

And so, this is only probably about a month and a half, two months ago since we planted a majority of this stuff.

We have some in kind of the different stages.

Obviously, the big tall ones doing really well, but we have more back there that are gonna be still blooming probably in about another month.

They've been really taken off the past month, I would say.

And so, it's just gonna cultivate more and more and grow out more and more, which will be really nice.

- Well, I love this partnership that you guys have created.

Tell me a little bit, so obviously, you have a wealth of information, so you help with the education programs that they do here at their gardens?

- Yeah, so we're doing a sort of a relationship right now with the college from the Euchee Butterfly Farm and Tribal Alliance for Pollinators.

So, I'll be out here every week, two times a week, Monday and Wednesday.

And so, just providing information like we're talking about right now, as well as different methods for sort of smart agricultural reasons.

And so going forward, talking about rain barrels, conserving water, utilizing native plants to conserve water.

Talk about burning a lot, because burning's a very core component of Oklahoma's grassland systems.

And so, those kind of get underlooked, but it's a crucial part of the ecosystem.

So, having whoever really wants to come out here, there's no restrictions that you don't have to be a student or an employee or anything.

If you want to learn about native plants, how to grow them, you can just come here and you know, I'll help you out whatever way I can.

- So, this is fantastic.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

- Yeah.

(upbeat classical music) - [Host] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(upbeat classical music continues) For the next two weeks, OETA will be conducting fundraising, but we'll be right back here with brand new Oklahoma Gardening shows on September 14th.

(upbeat classical music continues) (traffic droning) And some of our longer plant.

(host chuckling) 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.

Join in on Facebook and Instagram.

You can find this entire show and other recent shows as well as individual segments on our Oklahoma Gardening YouTube channel.

Tune in to our OK Gardening Classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous hosts.

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.

The botanic garden at OSU is home to our studio gardens and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful Stillwater gem.

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 Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants, the Oklahoma Horticulture Society, the Tulsa Garden Club, and the Tulsa Garden Center.

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