(lighthearted music) (chiming music) - Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today, we highlight a unique collaboration between the Tulsa County Master Gardeners and the Tulsa Boys' Home.

(chiming music) We are back at the OSU Student Farm to harvest and dry our basil crop.

(chiming music) And finally, we learn ways to make our lawns more drought resilient as the summer temperatures settle in.

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

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

(upbeat chiming music) We're back here at the Student Farm.

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

(upbeat chiming music) 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 chiming music) This season, we've been highlighting the many benefits of gardening and how they can help create healthier lifestyles.

The old adage, "You reap what you sow," has never been more appropriate as we visit the Tulsa Boys' Home and see how Danielle Adkins and her fellow Tulsa County Master Gardeners are using their horticulture knowledge to transform teens.

Many master gardener programs across our state are having positive influences on their community, but this program just goes to show you the bounty of the garden can go far beyond vegetables.

(lighthearted music) - So the Boys' Home has been around since 1918, so we're 106 years old this year.

Yeah, started out as an orphanage in response to the need in the community back then.

And a lot of group homes across the country started out as orphanages back in the day because of World War I and World War II in particular.

A lot of these parents were killed in the wars, and so the children were left to their own devices, and these orphanages sprung up around the country.

So over the last 106 years, the Tulsa Boys' Home has evolved over time to become now what's considered to be a residential treatment facility.

And we are nationally accredited and benchmarked against 455 of what's considered to be the best practice standards in our field.

I have this rockstar staff that just are incredibly gifted in helping these guys overcome their trauma.

but also, the physical environment is also, can be conducive to healing.

And that's where the Tulsa OSU Master Gardeners come in, under the capable and dynamic leadership of Danielle Adkins.

I mean, she is just a wizard, she's a rock star, she has got the gene.

She knows how to connect with these boys in ways that, and that's what you have to have.

We call it having the gene and the juice to connect with these boys.

And she has done that in a way that was, I wouldn't have believed it have I not seen it with my own two eyes.

- So I got started at the project at the Tulsa Boys' Home last summer.

I came here on a hope tour where they walk you through all the ins and outs of how the Tulsa Boys' Home became what it is today.

So I was asked to start a garden project with the boys and we created these garden beds for the boys to experience growing something, nurturing it, loving it, taking care of it, and hopefully eating it.

It's been interesting watching them because a lot of them are like, "I'm never gonna eat a vegetable," or "I'm not eating that vegetable."

And now, when it's growing, they come out, and they take it off the vine, and they start eating it, and they're just walking off eating a cucumber, or a radish, or when we had the peas.

Oh my gosh, they love peas so much.

They're like, "These things taste so good," so that's a win.

- [Greg] We have had a posse of OSU Master Gardeners descend upon the Tulsa Boys' Home campus and just breathe new life into all of our flower beds.

And not only that, Danielle by herself, has established the first ever Tulsa Boys' Home horticulture class, but, and a gardening club.

- [Danielle] So horticulture is definitely a more structured, more of a regular school type program.

We do do some hands-on, like seeding, or gardening, and things like that because there's so much that needs to be grown out here.

- But the class itself, they get a little bit of math in it.

They get, you know, spacing lessons.

How should we design our garden?

How much can fit in this garden?

Drawing it out.

Doing the math without them realizing they're getting that.

We also do some history because like if we're talking about Kenya, how do we grow things, or how do they grow things in Kenya versus how are we growing it?

And they get the culture of how it happened there, how it happens here.

And so they can see the difference and they can also see the similarities.

And then, in addition to that, then we teach 'em how to cook with it.

Whether it's cooking it just like raw, cold, cut it up, put some salt and pepper on it, or making spaghetti outta zucchini noodles and then tasting it, so they can see how, from the beginning to the end, the whole process and what they can do themselves.

So, gardening club is different because that is boys who truly want to be in the environment that we're in.

They want more of it, they wanna have more freedom in it, they wanna have more room to experiment in it.

And so those boys on their own are like, "Hey, I wanna come back.

I wanna come to this hour of gardening club."

And it's great because, one, they're excited.

And they're the ones that come up with more ideas and they help me come up with ideas of things that we should do in class as well.

So gardening club's more of that personal, it's a better way to connect with them.

They tell me, you know, stories and things that they enjoy about gardening, or what they want in gardening.

And we take it from there.

- I help shovel dirt into the garden.

Sometimes I water it, you know, if they need help.

It's pretty fun, you know, we do a lot of fun activities.

And then we built, you know, a pretty decent-sized coop for chickens.

- So I've done both, I started out with gardening club.

At first, I just needed something else to do, so I went to Miss Daniella and asked her about it and she said it was fun.

So I took her word on it and I'm happy I did.

It is really fun.

I did a little bit of gardening before I came in here, just helped my mom with hers.

It was fun when I was outta here, so I was like, might as well go do it now.

And I've not regretted it ever since.

It's been really fun.

- I just like the sunlight.

I like how peaceful it is, it's very peaceful.

I like that we get to plant stuff.

'Cause my teacher told me that when you plant stuff, it helps the world.

- So I became a master gardener for the knowledge.

And you get so much knowledge being a master gardener.

I mean, we all know how to put something in the ground and hope, and it's grown or not grown, but the science behind all of it is absolutely amazing.

But after you learn that, you take that information and you go to different places in the community and you educate, you help someone else who doesn't have the time or necessarily want to go through the program, you share that information that you have gotten from them with those people, or groups, or just whatever it is.

And you share it with them and you give them the knowledge that they need and they come back to you and they're like, "Hey, you know, this is now working, but now, hey, this is a problem, can you help me with this?"

And so it's always a challenge, but it's very rewarding, growing food and giving it to food pantries, or helping a community or an organization make their own garden that they can give away to other food pantries or people who need it, or for their own use, if they need it.

And it's absolutely rewarding.

And this place is absolutely amazing.

It's peaceful, it's serene.

It helps you be centered of yourself, whether you're here for yourself or you're here for one of the boys.

It's fabulous here.

- [Gardener] So we've got the gardening club going, whether we're growing our own vegetables and fruits, and then we have the enhancement of the flower gardens as well.

And again, the boys working side-by-side with the master gardeners as well to get all the new flowers and plants planted.

And so, you know, people help support what they help create.

And so the boys, having been involved directly in creating these enhanced, beautiful flower beds now, are much more likely to help take care of them than if somebody else did it and then they don't really care about them.

- So these are our new plants right here.

This is where we kind of, we have to get like, add some more area to it.

So this is our TBH logo right here.

We filled everything in, so there should be nice bushes around it instead of just soil.

It'll make it look a lot fuller, a lot nicer, a lot more vibrant.

We want it to stand out.

When someone walks down here, we want them to think like this is a peaceful, nice place, this a place where we change lives.

So we did like almost like an arrow shape right here, where it's gonna be a comb of red coming up to a tip of yellow and then back to red.

And then these purple bushes are gonna be right in the middle.

So it's gonna create, what we're hoping will be, is like a nice, flush arrow of beautiful flowers.

- That's amazing.

- So at first, before I did gardening club and horticulture, I was really stressed, a lot of anxiety.

You gotta be next to all these boys 24/7.

To be able to go out in the garden, it teaches you, one, patience.

Plants and flowers and anything that grows from the ground takes patience, it doesn't grow in a day.

So you really learn to... (birds chirping) - Just tend to it, and be careful, and it kind of teaches you in your own life.

You just gotta slow down.

The world is too fast sometimes.

So sometimes you gotta slow down, take a shovel, and plant.

Calm down, breathe, and relax.

It really helps me just get my anxiety out.

- My greatest hope is that the OSU master gardeners that have descended upon this campus to help us out with our gardening and the flowers and the vegetables and all of it will stay connected with us at the Tulsa Boys Home for the long term.

That this is not just a, you know, one shot kind of a deal.

I'm pretty sure that Daniel Atkins is in it for the long haul.

So I'm hoping that she can wrangle the rest of her OSU Master Gardner Posse to do the same.

- These boys, they want someone in their life that shows they care.

They want someone who's here for them.

They want someone who doesn't have to be here, who wants to be here because that's what they want.

They want to be here and they want someone to listen to them.

And the best place to listen to someone is when you're sitting next to when you're pulling weeds or you know, planting seeds.

I mean, that's the perfect time to have a conversation with someone, whether it's like super personal or just something funny or about a funny story, or they love those silly dad jokes, but they're funny at the same time.

But it's so genuine, and I don't want to use the word real world, but I come here and I mean, just look.

I mean, you can't, it's like not optional.

You're just automatically happy being here so yeah.

(upbeat music) - We are back out here at the OSU Student Farm and we're checking in on our basal crop.

And as you can see, it's definitely taken off.

And in fact, we're starting to get some flour buds.

So at this point, we want to make sure that we go ahead and harvest.

You can see in front of me, we have harvested some of it already.

However, I wanted to kind of review how we go about harvesting our basil.

So basil has opposite leaves.

You can see that out of every stem you'll have a leaf that comes out on opposite sides of that stem.

So what we're gonna do on these mature plants, we're gonna take it back to about this six to eight inch height.

So basically what we're taking is the upper growth that is the fresher, newer, and also doesn't have as much maybe dirt on it that maybe that lower growth does.

So we're simply gonna go in here and like I said, take it back significantly.

And the nice thing about basil is it's actually gonna continue to regrow.

So even though it looks like I'm taking a fair amount right now, you can see that on some of that that we've actually pruned earlier on just a week ago, has recovered quite nicely from that.

So we've got a few of 'em trimmed.

As you can see, we've got a fair amount to do still ahead of us, but at this point we want to go ahead and get this inside before it starts wilting down.

Now you do have a little bit of time with basil, commercially, this is done with specialized equipment where they actually just have sort of a mower that's at that raised height that goes along and cuts it.

So they're not necessarily being as selective about where it's being cut at.

But again, that's on a commercial production.

We are doing this on a smaller scale.

So now we're just gonna go ahead and get this processed.

Now that we've got some of our basil harvested, we're back here at Fabs.

And joining me is Dr. William McGlynn, who is a food scientist who's actually in the horticulture department, but he mainly deals with processing of fruit and vegetable crops.

Thank you for joining us today.

- Well, thank you Casey, good morning.

- Good morning.

- It's a beautiful looking bunch of basils.

- Yeah, we were out early harvesting to get it cut fresh.

So what's the next step we need to do with it?

- So the next step we are going to take it, we are going to pick the leaves off the stem.

'cause we don't want to waste time and effort drying the stems.

And we're gonna load it up into these trays and then we're gonna wash it.

And the reason we wash it is just to get any loose dirt, any bugs out, that sort of thing.

And then it'll go into the dryer.

- Okay, so let's talk a little bit about just the washing process.

Is there a standard way to wash it?

Could we just do it in a bath?

Or do we need to have running water?

- So there are a couple of options.

You could do it in a some kind of basin or bath and that would save water.

The potential concern there though, is food safety.

So if you have any kind of contamination, if you're using that same water to rinse all the leaves, there's a potential of spreading that contamination to all of the crop.

So the safest way to do it is to use just running water.

- Okay.

- All right.

- That's what we're gonna do today.

- Okay.

And then dehydrating, let's talk about that process.

It's not just a matter of cranking up the oven, right?

- Well, you can do that, but the goal is to dry it and preserve as many of those flavor compounds, those aroma compounds as we can.

And so the way to do that is to dry it as gently as possible.

So we're gonna be drying it at a relatively low temperature, about 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

And it's a process that's gonna take about a day, maybe a little bit longer, day and a half.

It's that trade off between time and temperature.

If you dry it at a higher temperature, it's gonna take less time, but the quality's not gonna be as good.

- Okay.

- We're trying to maximize the quality.

- So when you talk about those oils and those volatiles, that's what gives basil its flavor, right?

- Exactly right.

- That's what we're wanting to hold onto.

- That's what makes basil basil.

- Okay.

(gentle upbeat guitar music) So it looks like we've got some of our dehydrated basil here.

- Yes, Casey.

This is the stuff that comes out of the dehydrator, our beautiful basil all nice and dry.

And so the next step will be to go ahead and, commercially, you'd run it through a size reduction machine, a flaker that would basically grind it up just very gently and get it down to that small particle size that you would typically see for sale.

- Okay.

Now, there are some stems on this, and we did kind of de-stem the big stems prior to going in.

Is that what you would normally see in a commercial operation or- - [Interviewee] No, in a commercial operation, you would usually de-stem it after it's dried.

- [Casey] Okay.

- Just because you can run it through a piece of equipment that will do that automatically, but we don't have that equipment and it's more efficient just to dry the leaves rather than drying the stems as well, so that's why we did that.

- Okay, so in that flaking process though, we're gonna get rid of some of this woodier material and just get those leaves there.

- [Interviewee] Exactly.

We'll just put it through a screen to get rid of some of these larger pieces of stem.

- Okay.

All right.

Well, so next step is basically after flaking is packaging and labeling?

- That's right.

And then it's ready to go.

- All right.

Great.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music ends) - Today we are here with Dr. Mingying Xiang, who is our Turfgrass Extension Specialist.

And Dr. Xiang, it has been a wet spring, and now we are high into summer.

The temperatures have cranked up, the rainfall has stopped.

Tell us a little bit about how we transition our turf grass into those temperatures and make it more resilient.

- [Mingying] So today, I want to introduce a irrigation approach called wilt-based irrigation.

To prepare a little bit of stress on the grass, you can actually push a deeper root.

So for now, if your soil is still moist, try to turn off your irrigation for a few days and start watching your grass sculpt for any minor wilt symptom.

So the way I say minor drought symptom is when you look at your grass, if they have darker green color or even blueish-green color, that's a indicator of the enter and minor drought, and if you look closer on the leaf, you are going to see some wilting or road fold symptom.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Mingying] On the grass.

And if you want to walk on the grass, because the trigger pressure is low, so you can see your footprint or you.

- [Casey] So your grass won't bounce up when you're walking on it, right?

- So, yeah.

So that's the time to tell you time to water your grass.

- Okay, so you wanna start seeing some of those symptoms and wait until you see those symptoms before we're actually watering?

Out of stress causes resilience, right?

- Right.

Give them some minor stress before we enter a full drought.

Give them some minor stress, develop some stronger root system so the water in the deeper soil profile that's available for grass, that's a way to let them survive.

- Okay.

- The later drought.

- So while they're stressing, they are growing those deeper roots in hopes of finding more moisture, right.

- Yes.

- But if we, if we just keep reapplying it, it's gonna increase that shallow rooting, right?

- Exactly.

- Okay.

All right.

So in long term, as we think about this, obviously we are here on a fescue lawn.

Is there a difference in the symptoms?

Are they the same between fescue and Bermuda grass?

And what do we, how do we need to treat 'em?

- [Mingying] Yeah, I think they're pretty much the same.

The color, the color wise will be different.

You will always see either the leaf row or felled.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Mingying] That's the, that's the first indicator to tell you the grass need some water.

- Okay, so when we talk about fescue lawns, how much do we need to really think about watering as far as volume?

- [Mingying] So in the summertime, the average water loss on fescue lawn from evapotranspiration drained from one to five inches to two inches, depends on the week.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Mingying] If we don't get any precipitation, ideally you want to replace the same amount of water lost to your soil profile.

So if we start from the water conservation perspective, I would say replace at least 1.5 inches to- - [Speaker] To keep them green.

- Okay, now Bermuda grass is a little more tolerant of drought, so is it a little less than that?

- Yes, Bermuda grass, you have a transpiration rate is lower than fescue and other cool season grass.

So average, you have a transpiration water loss is about one inch to 1.5 inches.

So if we have a cloudy day like today, you have a transpiration is going to be lower, so average one inch would be the minimum for your Bermuda grass.

- Okay.

And, and one way to know how much you're actually putting down is an irrigation audit, right?

- Yes.

- What's an easy way of doing that in somebody's front yard?

- So if you get some tuna can or a, a catch can, something we professionally use, you can space, space them out in individual zone and turn on your water for maybe 20 minutes or so.

And the matter how much water you will captured in that can, in that ca- in that case, you can calculate what is your irrigation output and starting from there.

- Okay.

- You can turn on your irrigation for either 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or sometime even maybe 45 to an hour.

- Okay.

- Do the calculation first.

It is really basic math.

- Okay.

Very good.

And I know also there's mechanical ways of kind of alleviating some of that stress on our lawn too.

Let's talk about those as far as mowing height.

- Right.

To develop deeper roots.

So, on top of the well based irrigation, other things you can do is increase your mowing height, increase your mowing height.

Really, you produce more biomass, more leaf area to photosynthesis, and which means you produce a little more carbohydrate for root development.

And also by increase your mowing height, which means it reduce your mowing frequency.

So in the hot day, just take a break.

Enjoy, enjoy AC.

- Okay.

- And your grass will love that.

- Okay.

And so it'll sort of shade out that root zone just a little bit.

- Yeah.

- Cooling it off as well.

So, and I know, you know, obviously we kind of talk in general about the whole lawn, but we also need to kind of get out into our lawn during that irrigation audit and check for hotspots too, right?

- Right.

- Along the, the concrete edging or, you know, the fescue that's out in the full sun versus under the trees, right?

- Yeah.

So for, for irrigation, you really have to get familiar with your area.

There are area under full sun right now, they will need a little more irrigation.

Under full shade it's a different type of irrigation practice.

So for each zone, if you have an in-ground irrigation system, you really want to schedule them individually.

- Okay.

Or it might even mean pulling out a sprinkler, - Pulling out a sprinkler for the hotspot.

In that way, it's going to save you a lot more water instead of sacrifice, you know, the, the whole, the whole irrigation system.

Just pull out the hose to, to what the individual spot.

- Okay.

Well, I think this is gonna be helpful information as we head into the hot summer.

Thank you so much.

- Oh, thank you.

(celebratory classical music) - There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(classical music) Take a break from the summer heat and join us right back here next week for another great Oklahoma Gardening.

(classical music) All of this is kind of nice and crushed.

Seriously.

A Master Gardener, as she says, you know, a pretty sick title.

It's like being Darth Vader or something.

(classical music) 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 Oklahoma gardening dot OK state.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 into our OK Gardening Classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous posts.

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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