- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

It's almost spring, so I'll cover the do's and don'ts of buying mulch.

If you are new to gardening, we head to the Tulsa Garden Center to share all the resources they offer to new and experienced gardeners.

Jen Olson shares with us about fire blight.

Christie is preparing a black eyed pea salad.

And finally, I've got a reminder on how to properly mulch your trees.

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.

Oklahoma Gardening's 50th anniversary.

I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

- People in Oklahoma love their gardens.

- I feel like this is the People's show.

We all know we're working towards the common goal and that's to produce the best quality television and information for our audience.

It is that time of year we're all headed to the garden centers.

And one thing that I wanna make sure you're putting on your list to purchase is mulch.

We wanna make sure that we are mulching our garden.

And I know many of you're like, well, I just did it last year and it's disappeared and I don't like buying it again and again.

But really that is a good thing.

That means that mulch is breaking down, adding organic matter into your soil.

So there's a lot of mulch options out there and I just kind of wanted to go over a few of those with you here.

So we've went and purchased a few different ones that you commonly find out on the market, and these first two are pretty similar.

So they are kind of a shredded mulch here.

The big thing about these that they claim is the fact that they are red and black mulch.

So these are your colored mulches and I would say steer clear of these and if you are using them, make sure to use gloves because they kind of will also leave a bit of a stain on your hands too.

But the problem with these mulches is not only are they just artificially sort of dyed, but the fact that that dye also makes 'em really dark.

And so it actually increases the heat of your soil around there as well.

So I would steer clear of these dark dyed mules.

But the next ones we have here are pretty prominent mulches that we often see.

So we have your cypress mulch.

So again, this is kind of a shredded mulch.

A lot of people like using this 'cause it's gonna sort of mat a little bit more and it claims to not float.

It kind of depends on how much water we get and how quickly it comes down.

But it will sort of interwove a little bit more and make that mat in your garden.

So sometimes you might see that it's still there in your garden.

You might just fluff it up a little bit if you have this.

The next one we have here is our pine bark and nugget mulch.

So you can see it's more of a chunks and so this will float.

Again, it's not going to mat together or anything, but it might give you a little bit more of a polished look if that's what you're going for, especially if your kind of backyard has a lot of pine trees.

Of course this might fit a little bit more.

Now the one we kind of like to use a lot of times is just this cedar mulch.

Of course we have a lot of eastern red cedar trees around here, but this is just a shredded cedar mulch.

Again, it's gonna give you that nice kind of matted look to put in your garden.

Now all of these are often used in what we call like perennial beds and around trees.

Now if you're looking to mulch in something, maybe containers or your vegetable gardens, you might want something that's a little bit softer and it's gonna break down a bit sooner.

So here we have cotton hulls.

So cotton hulls is a great addition for some of those areas that you're gonna be using your hands a little bit more regularly or planting more regularly.

Or maybe you're working with smaller plants like seedlings.

This cotton seed hole will work nicely too.

Now it can sort of mat down.

So again, you might wanna kind of fluff it up a little bit.

But this is a nice mulch to use as well because it's just gonna break down from season to season much faster than some of these other hardwood cedar mulches.

Now the one that I would steer clear of unless you're using it for some design purpose.

So a lot of times we're looking for a kind of a look more than the purpose of mulches, which really mulches insulate that soil.

They help reduce weeds from germinating and growing by kind of shading them out.

They help conserve that water because we don't have as much water loss.

Now some people use rock mulch, you might remember from back in the day when they used like white marble rock.

Now you see sometimes more of this red lava rock being used.

You can even see sometimes pea gravel and things like that.

A lot of times this is for a different aesthetic.

The problem with this is this isn't gonna necessarily break down and add any value into your soil.

Again, rock is going to not hold moisture.

And so it's also going to add heat to that soil surface.

And the one thing about rock is once you put it on the ground, like you are gonna have it there for a lifetime.

If you've ever bought a house that where the previous owner has put this down, you'll know even though you might not see it out there, you're gonna be finding it in that soil as you dig through it.

So this is the one thing that I would maybe think twice about before you go and actually put down rock mulch.

So these are kind of some of the typical mulches that you see in the garden.

Now when you're putting mulch down, you wanna make sure you're putting about two to three inches of mulch throughout your garden.

So that's gonna give you a nice profile to again help insulate that soil and allow for less weeds.

As we head into the summer, - I think this is just a a stunning place for people to come visit and, and just, just to enjoy the garden.

- Today we're back at the Tulsa Garden Center at Woodward Park and joining me is Andy Fusco, who is the acting executive director.

And Andy, the formal gardens are still kind of sleeping, but they're starting to wake up and so often we talk about, you know, where can people go for information?

Right.

Obviously extension, but you guys are a great resource too.

- Yeah, since 1954 we've been what we call horticulture hub for Tulsa in the surrounding community.

Of course 16 plant societies, horticulture workshops, all kinds of gardening education of course.

Beautiful green space, soon to be green space.

- Yes.

I And that's the thing is that every spring there's new people that are discovering gardening.

- Yes.

- And looking for information how to get involved in the gardening community.

And you guys are a great start 'cause you have so many different clubs that specialize in particular plant areas.

- Oh yeah.

We've got the Garden Club, the Herb Society, the Rose Society, you name it.

We probably have a plant society for it.

And they have wonderful monthly meetings.

Most of them meet monthly.

But we also have lots of gardening workshops coming up this spring for beginners and experts alike.

- And, and that's the best thing is like you can get the lecture, you can get the information, but there's also a lot of hands-on plant sale.

We all have plant sales.

- Oh yeah.

I mean our biggest event this year, 70th annual spring fest at Woodward Park, April 11th and 12th.

We're really excited for that Tulsa's oldest garden market, if you can believe it.

We've been doing it for 70 years and 40 plus plant vendors will have our own plant sale.

The plant societies will be out here with information and plant and it's just a really great time to celebrate spring and come out here and nerd out with all your fellow plant lovers - And get those connections.

'cause you know, everybody, all the other gardeners have so many, so much experience and information that they can also offer.

- Yeah, that's what I love about horticulture and gardening is it's such a communal hobby that everybody's so willing to share plants Of course.

And knowledge that if you really had to boil, what we're doing here is really building community around a shared love of the outdoors and gardening - And you're always looking for volunteers.

Correct?

- Yes.

Yeah.

The Teaching Garden program is alive and well, but you don't have to commit to that whole program to come out and volunteer.

We always love having people that wanna get their hands dirty and help make Woodward Park the beautiful place that it is.

- And so for somebody who maybe hasn't been out here, can you tell us a little bit about what they might find just as far as the gardens to explore also?

'cause there's people that maybe aren't gardeners, but they enjoy being out here.

- Right.

And it's a, it's, it's a, it's a great relationship.

'cause Tulsa Garden Center, we're in one of Tulsa's, you know, most beautiful parks, city of Tulsa's Parks department takes care of most of Woodward Park.

And then we're a nonprofit within the park that does all the events in the wonderful educational programming.

And so you can come out and of course take a wonderful workshop with us, but you can come out and just take a picnic, take your family photos, all that wonderful stuff that Woodward Park is known for.

- And I don't think I've ever been out here where I don't see an artist actually out here painting.

Yeah.

And doing some of that stuff also.

- Yeah.

I mean that's one of the best parts about my job honestly, is, you know, I can take a walk in the park and I'm working and just, I get to interact with so many different people from all walks of life.

And this place means something different to everybody and it's just, it's, it's really cool to give back in that way - And to see that.

And you said 70th anniversary roots in history, right?

- Yes.

So yeah, we've been here a long time and it's great to see other horticulture institutions kind of come up around us in Tulsa.

But we've been here and you know, we're the place to be.

- Yes.

And I kind of grew up around this area too.

So coming in, this is how I kind of got spurred on into horticulture myself.

So - Yes.

- Tell me a little bit, remind me of your hours.

- The park is open, 5:00 AM to 11:00 PM normal Tulsa curfew hours.

Okay.

Tulsa Garden Center is open to the public Tuesday through Friday, nine to four, and the teaching garden's getting ready to open in the spring.

Tuesday through Saturday nine to four.

- All right.

Well check out your website for more information.

You got, oh yeah, so much going up.

A lot of events coming up.

Yeah.

Thank you so much, Andy.

Thanks Casey.

- It is late winter for you, but we're actually filming this in late May because I want you to see how bad fire blight can disease can be fire blight's a bacterial disease and it affects apples, pears, and then other plants that are closely related to apple and pear.

Some years we'll see it on Nia raspberry strawberry, but we're really gonna focus today on fire blyte management on your apples and pears in your home orchard.

So if you haven't started a home orchard and you're out shopping for trees, one of the first things you can do is to try to find trees that say they are highly resistant to fire blight disease, because that built in resistance is gonna make it so your tree never looks as bad as this one.

Second step, if you already have existing trees that are having some level of fire blight, you can start doing this in August all through the fall.

And in the winter, you want to closely scout those trees and look for what are called cankers.

The fire blight disease causes the shoots to blacken.

And as the bacteria becomes dormant at the base of that blackening, there's sort of a cracked sunken area that looks a little bit different.

That's the canker and that's where the bacteria survives when it's not active.

So during the fall and winter months, as we are getting close to the time that apples and pears are going to bloom in Oklahoma sometime, usually in late February or March, this is the time to decide if you are going to use any chemical management for fire blight.

So some of you may want to do no spray home orchards.

If you wanna do that, you really need that highly resistant plant.

But if you are willing to spray some chemicals, you can get a greater variety of apple impair types if you're willing to spray fungicides or bacteriacides.

So the products that we use for fire blight control or copper containing fungicides, there are several different types available in your local garden center.

That's one choice.

And there are versions of copper sprays that are suitable for organic gardens if you want to go that route.

Another product that can be used is an antibiotic.

The active ingredient in fire blade spray is streptomycin sulfate.

So both of these products are highly selective for firelight.

They're not gonna ha hurt any of your pollinators.

However, it's still best to spray them late in the day after the pollinators have gone home, because I'm sure it's kind of hard to fly when you're wet and sticky.

As we move later in the spring, if you do have some fire blight develop, you might start to see what we're seeing on this tree here.

Several different shoots with the blackening, the discoloration, and this is where your next great step in fire blight management is pruning.

So get your pruning tools and start cutting it out.

Anytime you see something diseased, it's good to go ahead and cut that out of the tree rather than just let it go.

With pruning in the spring for fire blight, you need to be really aggressive.

So you might have, you know, maybe I just take off a little bit below where it's blackened.

Much better to go at least 12 to 18 inches below the blackening where it's black is where the bacteria has killed it, but the bacteria has already moved lower in that branch, it just hasn't killed it yet.

So be aggressive and vigilant with your pruning.

Since we're talking about pruning.

Bacteria are really easy to spread with pruning tools.

So I like to use about five or six different hand tools, and I carry a little bucket with me that I put in one part bleach, nine parts water so that I can rotate through those tools by the time I've got to the sixth one and go back to the first.

A lot of the antibiotic, or excuse me, the bacteriacides, these disinfectants need a couple of minutes to do their disinfecting action so I can make sure those tools are clean and I'm ready to go.

There's lots of different choices for disinfectants.

You can purchase sprays and wipes and things like that, just pay attention to how long they take to work.

Now as we get into the hot and dry part of summer, late July and August, that's when the fire blight bacteria goes dormant.

And that's where we start over.

We start looking for those overwintering cankers and continue pruning them outta trees.

So fire blight management resistance is your best strategy if you're going to try to treat and prevent the disease.

Spraying the blooms about every four to seven days.

And then third vigilant pruning to try to cut out any of the disease should it develop.

Hopefully with those tips, you can have a keep your health plants healthy, firelight free and end up with a really good fruit crop.

- Today we're gonna be making black eyed pea salad.

Now, black eyed peas, a lot of times people like to enjoy them at New Year's Day, but really black eyed peas are a great source of plant-based protein and fiber that you could have any time of year.

These black eyed peas, I'm using two cans of black eyed peas.

If you had either dried or fresh black eyed peas, you could use those as well.

You would just need to cook them and let them completely cool before adding to the salad.

So after the Black Eyed Peas, we're gonna use two celery stocks.

I've already washed and trim the ends, so I'm just going to dice our celery.

Okay, so we'll add our two stocks of celery to the salad.

And then next I'm using one quarter of an onion.

I'm using a yellow onion, but any red white onion would work.

Or you could also use shallot or green onion.

That would work as well.

And just like with the celery, I'm just gonna dice the the onion.

Okay.

And the next, I'm gonna add two Roma tomatoes.

And you could use any, any type of tomato or you could even use like cherry or grape tomatoes would work if you had like multiple colors of tomatoes, I think would make this salad really pretty.

And it's okay if you don't D dice the tomato really fine.

The main thing is you just don't want to, when you're cutting a tomato, you don't wanna crush the tomato.

And tomatoes are really good to add to just about any salad.

It gives it a lot of more nutrients.

Tomatoes are a great source of vitamin C and folate and lycopene.

And the lasting thing that we're gonna do is mix our dressing for our salad for the dressing, we're going to use one quarter of a cup of extra virgin olive oil, three tablespoons of red wine vinegar.

You could also, if you don't have red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar would also work.

And then I'm using one teaspoon of minced garlic.

Now if you had a, we're using fresh garlic, you would wanna use one clove of garlic.

And so I'm just gonna whisk the dressing.

Okay.

And then we're gonna pour the dressing over our salad and then give it a good stir.

And by adding that olive oil and vinegar to it, it really pulls all the flavors really well together in the salad.

And now this is a salad that you wanna serve cold.

So even though the ingredients are cool at this point, it really helps if you put the salad in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before you serve it.

So we'll go ahead and add it to the refrigerator and then it's ready to be served.

Okay.

And now that our salad is cold, it's ready to be served.

So again, this salad, it can be served any time of year.

And because the protein, the prep plant-based protein that's in the black eyed peas, this could be a standalone, like a light, like a light lunch, or it could be served as a side dish.

So either way, I hope you give this a try.

It's the black eyed pea salad - For this recipe and more like it scan this QR code This time of year.

We also wanna remember to mulch our trees and please don't think this is how we do it.

Okay, I wanna kind of review how we need to go about mulching our trees.

Now, all too often we see in the landscape where the mulch is piled up high on the trunk of the tree.

And all this is doing is creating problems on that trunk of the tree because mulch really retains moisture.

That's the value of it.

And when you pile it up on the trunk of the tree, what's happening is you're causing problems where that moisture stays next to that bark and then will cause decay and issues and insects and disease can start to kind of break into the trunk of the tree.

So instead what we wanna do is make what we call tree wells.

So this is where we maybe put just a couple of inches at the base of the tree.

You can see where that tree flare starts to come out.

You're gonna put just a couple inches there, but then we're gonna pull the rest of this mulch out away from the trunk and sort of create a doming effect out from around the tree.

This, you can see it's a little bit thicker here, and then we'll slough it off as we go into the landscape here.

What this is gonna do is anytime you have rainfall that will sort of sit here, kind of keep it at the center of that tree, allow that moisture to percolate down into that root bowl, but we're not keeping the moisture up along the tree.

So no tree volcanoes, mulch, volcanoes.

We don't want any of that.

We just wanna make a nice donut around our tree.

Now clearly we need a little bit more mulch.

We're gonna come back and mulch this whole area, but I just wanted to review how to mulch nice tree wells around your trees.

Just wanna remind you that this year we're celebrating 50 years of Oklahoma gardening.

And in doing so, we have been creating a documentary titled Rooted in Oklahoma, celebrating 50 years of Oklahoma gardening.

It will premiere right here on OETA on March 27th at 7:00 PM You don't wanna miss it.

There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

Just a reminder, that Rooted in Oklahoma will premiere this Thursday, March 27th at 7:00 PM right here on OETA.

It's that time of year that we're all headed to the garden centers and a lot of times we're looking for, let's - Start over.

- Can we cut because I didn't gar grab the plate to serve it on.

So you run - 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 okay 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 Ossu 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.