(soft music) (classical music) - Welcome to "Oklahoma Gardening."

Today, we're headed to historic Fort Reno to visit a collaborative garden project.

David Hillock has our 2024 Oklahoma Proven Perennial plant.

I've got some colorful tomatoes to share.

And finally, we head to our daily bread to visit a unique teaching garden.

(classical music) 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.

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

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

I want to share with you a tropical plant that you might find in some Oklahoma landscapes.

It's important to know which plants we are dealing with so that we can continue to maintain them successfully for years to come.

Today, we are out here at the historic and beautiful Fort Reno, just west of El Reno, Oklahoma.

And it's also home to one of the USDA research centers.

And joining me is Ann Marshall, who is the Education Director for the BlueSTEM AgriLearning Center.

Thank you so much for having us out here.

So you guys are a STEM project, right, that gets involved in the community.

Tell me a little bit about your reach.

- Well, we started this program in 2015 in conjunction with the USDA.

And the idea was that they really would like a STEM center in this area.

And so we started and it's grown into a huge program.

We service at least four high schools around here, as well as other, you know, smaller elementary, middle school kids.

They come out here and we do station rotations.

But our high school program is probably our stellar program.

And they actually get AP credit through their high school.

They are here.

They get to work with USDA scientists and do primary research, so it's an amazing program that has grown exponentially in the last nine years.

- And you guys cover all sorts of science.

- Yes.

- Let's talk about some of the sciences that you cover and the partnerships that you have.

- Okay, well, we have a complete aquaponic system in our basement.

But our biggest thing is that we really try to partner with people in the community.

And so a few years back we received a STEM designation that was because of our partnerships with the Canadian County Master Gardeners, with the USDA, with Redlands Community College, and other entities, as well as school systems in this area.

- Very good.

And I know one of those partnerships is with the Canadian County Master Gardeners.

- Yes.

Yes.

- Tell us a little bit about how you're utilizing the garden.

- Okay, so we have a vegetable garden, which Carolyn Balson helped us start.

And our students are involved in that and they learn how to preserve food.

They learn how to can, how to pickle, how to make jellies.

And then they take it to our local farmers market.

And that is on Wednesday and Saturday, and they sell it.

And so it's kind of a full circle where they learn how to do a business as well as, you know, food preservation.

- Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to go check out the garden.

- Okay.

Fantastic.

- Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

- Yes, absolutely.

(birds chirping) - Hi, Janet.

How are you?

- Hi, Casey.

Hi.

- It's so good to see you, to be back here.

- In Canadian County.

- Yes.

It has been a while.

And you guys have been busy bees out here.

- We really have.

We are so excited to have you and "Oklahoma Gardening" come out and take a look at our pollinator garden.

- Tell me a little bit.

So we're in the vegetable garden here too.

- And I don't do a lot of the vegetable work, but the Master Gardeners did help with this.

At one time, this was nothing but Bermuda grass, Johnson grass, and we convinced the ladies, please go with raised beds.

So last year, that's what we did.

We got these raised beds.

One of our Master Gardeners, Roy McMullen, came out and did a workshop showing everyone how you start a raised bed, so - [Casey] And you utilized different things, tubs and water troughs.

I love it.

So anything that holds the soil.

- [Janet] The ladies asked for a lot of donations and this is what they got.

And this is what we use.

- This is fabulous.

- It's wonderful.

- But I know what's really dear to your heart is this pollinator garden, so let's talk about this.

This is beautiful and I feel like we hit it at the prime time, probably is this way all the time, right?

- We started this in 2020 with about eight volunteers.

And this was nothing but Johnson grass.

- [Casey] Wow.

- [Janet] And so we divided it up into four quadrants because we knew that would be easier for us to take care of.

This is our monarch gardens.

We have a lot of milkweed here and nectar plants for the adult monarchs.

- [Jana] I love the tithonia.

- [Casey] I do too, the Mexican sunflower.

- That is a great nectar plant.

Over here, we had to have a special garden for our eastern black swallowtail, - Okay.

- That's our state butterfly.

So we have a lot of fennel and nectar plants for them.

- All right.

- We'll come out here and this will be loaded with chrysalises and caterpillars, so there's a lot of them- - You got a little art in there, too?

- Bless her heart, that is Betty Blue Stem.

- Okay.

- And my husband, Martin, made her for our, we hosted the state conference last year, - Right, the Master Garden State Conference.

- And the this garden was part of the tour and he made that for me.

And this is a man who was troubled nailing a picture .

on the wall.

But he did this and it was wonderful.

- [Casey] Well, it looks like you have a few more, the gaillardia and the blue grama- - [Jana] We do, we had to have Oklahoma State wildflower, the gaillardia, so we had to have plenty of those.

We've got something for every type of pollinator.

When we started the garden, we knew that we wanted a pollinator garden, and we wanted a diverse pollinator garden.

So the plants that we selected, Patty Ingram helped me, the plants had to be drought-tolerant.

- [Casey] Okay.

- They had to grow in the worst kind of dirt you can imagine.

So this is the third year for all of this.

And you know what they say?

First year the garden sleeps.

Second year it creeps.

Third year, this garden is leaping.

- It is leaping, indeed.

- And you've got some pollinators- - Yeah, that's our- - Visiting us right now.

- That's our eastern black swallowtail.

- So what are these two?

You kind of have designated, obviously, the pollinators go all over, but you kind of designate them.

- Okay, this one, we've got a lot of our native grasses, like blue stem, switch grass, blue grama grass.

- Okay.

- [Jana] And some of the native prairie plants.

Like this is a rattlesnake master.

That's a beautiful plant.

- [Casey] It's a big one, yeah.

- [Jana] This is our prairie sage.

This is one of our only native sages in Oklahoma.

- [Casey] And I love that it gives you that blue color in the garden, right?

- [Jana] I know, I love that.

Over here because we were closer to the water fountain, we put in some plants that needed a little bit more water like iron weed, Little Joe Pye weed, slender mountain mint.

So that's that.

We have a lot of golden rods that'll be coming up too.

- [Casey] And some asters coming on later on too, I imagine.

- [Jana] Yeah.

- [Casey] Well it's smart making use of your kind of microclimate because you're by the spigot there that- - [Jana] Yeah.

- [Casey] Sometimes your water drains out a little bit.

- [Jana] We put it right in there and let those that need the water take it.

- [Casey] So Jana, I see some spiral gardens here.

- We are so proud of these spiral gardens.

Originally, this whole area was laid out with a brick walkway.

- Okay.

- And when we redid the garden, we had all that extra brick.

And so I said, well, let's build some spiral gardens.

So everybody said, sure, yeah, let's do this.

So the first one we started, this is our Native American spiral garden.

- This one here?

Okay.

- And it's planted with plants that were native to this area, that were important to our Native Americans.

And so we've got the white sage, the blanket flower, and the butterfly weed.

Then over here, Carolyn Balson suggested we do one with the herbs that our settlers would've brought with them as they traveled the country.

And so these are all herbs that were brought from England and other parts of the country, Asia.

- [Casey] Oh, interesting.

- [Jana] The lady that made us a sign that tells what each plant is for, what their cooking purposes would've been, medicinal and ceremonial.

So yeah, we're very proud of this.

- And then you have a third garden over here.

- We do.

- Gardens just keep growing around here, don't they?

- And I have plans for next year.

But when we finished this, we had this area, and I thought, okay, they have beehives and so let's make them a bee garden.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Jana] So we planted a lot of plants here that are not necessarily native, but that the European honeybee likes and that's what they've got.

So we planted a lot of blue Russian sage.

- [Casey] Well, it's just beautiful.

- [Jana] Thank you.

- [Casey] You guys have put a tremendous amount of work into this garden.

I mean, is it on irrigation or tell us a little bit about, obviously, a lot of these are native, so- - [Jana] They are, we planted native plants and a lot of those will have, the roots will go down six foot.

So my husband and I have been watering these, but we only come out like maybe once a week if it needs it.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Jana] So we hand water.

- [Casey] So they're doing pretty well out- - [Jana] They are.

- Out here in Western Oklahoma conditions.

- And the reason I like to come out here and hand water is because I get to come out and hear the roar of the bees and see all the butterflies and yeah, I love it out here.

- Well it is not only a very active garden- - It is.

- For all of the education, but it's also active with pollinators.

Thank you so much for sharing.

- Oh, Casey, thank you.

And I just wanna thank all my volunteers who have helped all these years, yeah.

You guys are great!

(both laughing) - Our Oklahoma proven perennial for 2024 is one of the ironweeds.

Ironweeds fall in the genus Vernonia and there's several different species and they are native throughout North America.

This particular one here, which is Vernonia lettermannii, often called Narrowleaf Ironweed, or Letterman's Ironweed.

And it is actually found growing in west central Arkansas and adjacent counties or areas in Oklahoma.

It is found growing in rocky areas, flood plains, river scours, places like that.

It's actually really tough once it gets established.

It's very drought tolerant but will also tolerate brief flooding.

It grows well in poor nutrient soils so it actually doesn't like to be really rich in nutrients and in organic matter, otherwise the stems can get kind of weak and it can start flopping over.

But this is an awesome plant.

It's upright, as you can see, gets about two to three feet tall and just about as wide.

And then mid to late summer it produces these beautiful clusters of kind of frilly Aster-like flowers that are purple and they'll bloom for several weeks into early fall.

So it's a great plant for attracting butterflies and other pollinators.

As I mentioned, it's very drought tolerant and it's just a great choice for the garden.

(upbeat music) - Today we are talking tomatoes and not the traditional red tomato that we think of as king of the summer vegetables, but just like you, we are guilty sometimes when we're flipping through those plant catalogs and see some things that are kind of unique and interesting and kind of wanna experiment and try with it.

So I thought I would share with you our little bit of an experiment behind the scenes here, what we've been doing, and I'm not necessarily recommending any of these tomatoes, but I just thought I would show you some that we've grown and kind of how unique they are.

So all of these that I'm gonna talk about are not a red tomato, in fact, they are orange and yellow and green and even, in some cases, a purple black color.

So let me show you what we've got here at this row.

So I wanna show you some of the ones that we're growing here and to start us off, one that we actually really enjoyed, kind of the flavor and all of these are slightly underripe, but we went ahead and picked 'em 'cause they're starting to get that blush stage and I'll talk about that in a minute, but this one is called Ananas Noire or Black Pineapple, and so it kind of has that kind of pinkish red color to the bottom of it, and as it transitions up, it goes through a yellow and green and that's actually what it looks like when it's ripe.

It's fairly large, good slicer, but it has sort of a mild sweet flavor to it.

And we really just like the coloration of it.

Again, this one's a little bit still underripe, but it will ripen up for us inside.

Now the next one we have here is called a Black Beauty and you can see that it gets this dark purple color on the shoulders of otherwise sort of a greener tomato, but again, a little bit smaller, but a nice prolific producer for us.

The next one we have is called Chef's Choice Black.

And this one, I can't say that it really got that darker color for us too much, but it does have sort of a darker green, red color to it.

And again, this one is an All-America Selection, the others are hybrids, but this particular one is an All-America Selection and so you're gonna get a little more disease resistance to this particular one.

Also, the next one is also an All-America Selection and this is called Chef's Choice Green.

So you'll notice it is similar to the Chef's Choice Black, although it has more of a yellow that fades into the green on the shoulders.

Again, you'll get some disease resistance with these because they are cultivars versus some of the heirlooms.

The next heirloom that we have is a one that is well known and this is called Cherokee Purple.

This is a very popular heirloom and one that is often found not only in gardens but also in the kitchen because of the flavor that you get with this.

So it's gonna have a darker, kind of red burgundy color to it as it ripens.

And again, a good sizable slicer to add to your sandwich.

Now the next one is really unique.

This one's called Orange Accordion, and you can see how it gets that name because it will ripen completely just a vibrant orange color and it's got these sort of lobes to it, giving it that accordion a look to it.

When you do slice it open, it's gonna have a little more openness in that actual fruit when you're putting it on something, very unique look, might be a little different for some people to actually eat, but one that was actually a very mild and kind of flavorful, so we enjoyed this one as well.

Now the next one we have here is again, another All-America Selection, so again, you're gonna get some built-in resistance on this one.

This is called Purple Zebra and it's going to have kind of dark purple stripes on a red tomato, and you can see it's starting to turn red here, so we went ahead and picked it.

- This is actually a little bit smaller than some of the other ones that we have been getting, and some of the other Purple Zebras that we've been harvesting.

So it's a little bit smaller, but again, overall, Purple Zebra is a little smaller than some of these other cultivars that I've mentioned.

I would say it's a little bit bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball, but sort of like a plum size.

One of the unique features that we did notice is it's kind of got this acorn shape to it.

They're all sort of pointed at the bottom of this but a good look to add onto your plate as well.

And then the last one we have is Sart Roloise, and it is a yellow tomato that's got purple shoulders on it.

And honestly, if I was looking at it, between this and the Orange Accordion, you could have told me these are tomatoes, and I'd kind of question it a little bit because this to me looks almost more like an eggplant than it does a tomato.

Obviously, they are related and in the same plant family, but again, a good producer for us.

So this is just some of the ones we tried.

Now this is just a little bit of an experiment to see what varieties we can get with some tomatoes here, and we haven't had any problems.

Now, the one kind of thing that we had to kind of deal with is the fact that all of these are indeterminate.

You can see they've sort of outgrown our T-posts.

So if you are growing indeterminate tomatoes, keep in mind that you wanna have a good trellis system for them to grow beyond a regular T-post.

Here in Oklahoma, we are in the hot days of summer, and anytime we get over that 85 degree temperature, it really slows the ripening down of tomatoes.

And if you start to see that coloring, that means it's ripening, and you can go ahead and pick it and take it indoors to a cooler temperature, and it will continue to ripen.

Now if you've noticed your tomato production has actually declined a little bit, again, that is because of our heat.

This is why we grow tomatoes as transplants to get them out in the garden sooner because, really, that 70 degree range is the optimal range for pollination as well to occur.

So our evening temperatures are a lot of times higher than 70 degrees, so we don't get good pollination of our tomatoes at this point.

But keep in mind, if you have a decent tomato plant, and it hasn't succumbed to all of the factors that they can encounter, keep it growing.

And as our temperatures start to decline as we come out of summer, you'll again see some fruit set on your tomatoes.

So again, I just wanted to share some of the unique cultivars that we were trying here in our garden.

And don't be afraid to experiment a little bit.

Give yourself some leeway to go ahead and maybe pick one or two of those plants that you're curious about this winter when you're checking out the catalogs.

(upbeat country music) Today, we are here at Our Daily Bread, and while we've been here before, we've been in a different garden.

Today we are looking at another side of the garden, which was developed and established by Dr. Bailey Norwood for his Farm to Fork program.

And joining me is Dr. Norwood.

Thank you so much for having us here in this garden.

So tell us a little bit about why you established a garden for your program.

- Well, I started my Farm to Fork class in 2015, and at the time, it was completely online, and it would have over 200 students in it.

And it seemed weird that I had a course called Farm to Fork with a large enrollment, and I never even met the students, and we didn't do anything outside.

And then in 2017, they were building Our Daily Bread, and they had all this just grassy area around it.

And I looked at it and said, "We should have a garden."

And so we started the Farm to Fork Garden here, and what we do now is the students taking the class, they do quizzes and tests and things like that, but one of the requirements is they have to come out here in the garden and work.

- Okay.

- And so during the spring, we're raising lots of cool-season vegetables like lettuce, broccoli, that kind of thing.

And then during the summer, when the kids leave, we transition the garden to summer crops.

So we try to grow things that the OSU student farm isn't growing, more unusual things.

- Okay.

- [Bailey] And people come out here, and they pick it themselves.

- Well, I love a garden that experiments a little bit.

So we should mention your background is ag economy, which I think you're the first economist to be on "Oklahoma Gardening," but how does that play into horticulture?

- (laughs) Right, it ends up working pretty well.

One, I envy horticulturists because they get to do so many different things.

- We got the best office.

- Yes, that's more interesting than just crunching numbers.

But I'll give you one way it ends up working well with ag econ.

And so the students come here, and they grow the vegetables, and we bring it inside to give to the people here.

But then we also study how the food charity supply chain works, how Our Daily Bread gets produce from the food banks and Feeding America.

And there's a lot of economics in there.

- Absolutely, and I know you're doing a lot of, like, investigating the inputs that go into the garden economically, what's that's the value of the water and the labor and all of that, versus the product that comes out of it, so.

- Absolutely.

- It's fascinating, some of the research that you're doing.

But let's get back to the garden here for a minute.

I know you've got a lot of different plants that you're experimenting with.

Tell us a little about a few of them.

- [Bailey] There's three of 'em in particular.

- Okay.

- I'm trying to find 'em.

One is a apple melon.

That's the common name for it.

I bought some seeds about 10 years ago for it.

- [Dr. Norwood] And it's a melon, but it produces a small melon and you can just cut it in half and just scoop the seeds out and eat everything, including the skin.

- [Casey] Oh, really?

- [Dr. Norwood] And it kind of tastes like a granny apple.

And the nice thing is it loves Oklahoma.

- [Casey] Really?

- It does, yes.

The heat, the humidity, the soils, it grows great here.

- Okay, fantastic.

We're always looking for something to add to the Oklahoma landscape.

- I've never had to spray it for anything.

Never had a problem with it.

- Okay, all right.

And what are some of the other ones you're looking at?

- The other one is, this is a new one I've done this year, something called Bolivian coriander.

So you know how there's the plant cilantro, we call the seeds coriander.

- [Casey] Right, right.

- [Dr. Norwood] And we love cilantro in sauces.

- [Casey] It's a cool season though, so it tends to bolt on us.

- [Dr. Norwood] Right, as soon as you can start getting leaves from it, it bolts.

- [Casey] Right, right.

- [Dr. Norwood] And so there's a plant, they call it Bolivian coriander because in Bolivia they use the leaves as a substitute for coriander.

- [Casey] Oh, okay.

- But the nice thing is it doesn't bolt, it just keeps growing and keeps producing lots of leaves.

And so you can keep harvesting the leaves all summer long.

And it does eventually seed, but not 'til towards later in fall.

- And it's got a beautiful foliage.

It could be a very nice ornamental to add into the landscape as well.

- It does.

And once, I've learned it can be a little finicky when it's getting started, but once it gets a good root system in and at summer, it takes off.

- Okay.

- And it's a tough plant.

- Excellent, takes off in a good way instead bolting on us.

- That's right, exactly, exactly.

- And then I know you really are fond of Partridge pea.

So let's talk about the Partridge pea.

- If you had told 18-year-old Bailey Norwood that he would be talking about his favorite flower when he was 50 years old, ah, he wouldn't know what to think of that.

Yeah, my favorite pollinator plant is one called Partridge pea.

- Okay.

- [Dr. Norwood] And I like it for a number of reasons.

One, it's native.

And so it and the native bumblebee evolved together, and you can tell because the bumblebees love it.

Early in the morning, you get out in a Partridge pea patch and you'd listen.

All you can hear is the buzzing.

- [Casey] It's just vibrating over there, yeah.

- [Dr. Norwood] You'll swear every bumblebee within Payne County is right in that patch.

- [Casey] Oh, you have all of 'em here.

- [Dr. Norwood] Yeah, and they go, the bees go into the flower and they, you know how your phone vibrates.

- [Casey] Yeah.

- [Dr. Norwood] When you get a call, it gets in there and it shakes and it shakes the pollen out.

- [Casey] Oh, very interesting.

- [Dr. Norwood] Yes, and another thing I like, it's a beautiful plant.

You got lovely yellow flowers that for like three months will keep producing flowers - [Casey] And a legume.

- [Dr. Norwood] It's a legume.

- [Casey] So you're also helping with the soil.

- [Dr. Norwood] That's right.

- [Casey] And the nitrogen fixations.

- [Dr. Norwood] And they do use it as a cover crop in some places.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Dr. Norwood] Especially in riparian buffers.

- [Casey] Okay, okay.

- [Dr. Norwood] And it's tough.

- [Casey] Now it looks like it's popped up in a few different places in your garden.

So be forewarned a little bit to homeowners that if they do put it out, they might find it coming up in other places.

- [Dr. Norwood] But it's not a perennial and it only spreads by seeds.

- [Casey] Okay, okay.

- [Dr. Norwood] But it does reseed itself nicely.

So the patch I have here, I think it was around 2017, I just threw out some seeds on the ground.

The plants popped up and every year they reseed themselves.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Dr. Norwood] I've never had to replant it.

- [Casey] Okay, but being a native, we're a little bit more okay with that.

- [Dr. Norwood] Exactly.

- [Casey] When it comes to reseeding.

- [Dr. Norwood] And the bumblebees certainly are.

- [Casey] Absolutely.

- [Dr. Norwood] Yeah.

- Well, Norwood, thank you so much for sharing your garden with us today.

- Thank you.

(bright orchestral music) - [Casey] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(bright orchestral music) - [Announcer] Join us next week as we're talking about pollinators and pawpaws right here on "Oklahoma Gardening".

(bright orchestral music) - Striration, stri, sty.

- [Production] Striations.

- Striations, striations.

- [Production] What's this one's name?

- [Casey] This is Chalk.

- [Production] Oh, okay.

- Peaceful day, ready to shoot.

(bright orchestral music) - [Announcer] 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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