- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today we have a show full of hope and inspiration.

I'll start out by introducing you to a couple of plants.

Then we visit with a group of ladies who are gardening to make the most of their situation.

And finally, we look at how technology is improving our understanding of monarch migration.

All this and more coming up.

So stay tuned.

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 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.

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It's a place to learn, to grow, and be inspired.

It's where Oklahoma State University bridges research, education, and passion.

We share one goal, to serve the gardeners who inspire us.

That's what makes Oklahoma gardening true to Oklahoma and true to gardeners.

We've got another All America selection winner here.

Now, this won a couple of years ago, I think it was 2023 that this one won.

This is the premium sun coral candy colius.

And so it is a winner because it just really holds up into the sun and also offers you a really interesting foliage texture.

So you can see it's got some serate, kind of narrow leaves, sort of shingle over, kind of have a little bit of a layering effect on the plant.

Now, the plant is going to get about a foot tall, but it'll have a spread of about 10 to 16 inches, so a little bit wider.

But it's got this nice uniform appearance.

So we've got about nine plants planted here.

And so that's really what's nice about is having that uniform consistency in your landscape.

Now, the reviews on it said that it didn't actually produce a lot of flowers until well into fall.

I can't say that that was our experience here.

You can see we've got quite a bit of flowers on here.

If it's something that you don't want to have flowers, they're really easy to just go in there and kind of pinch those off and that will continue to allow you to have that foliage without the distraction of the flowers if you want.

What's a little bit unique about this colius for AAS is it's the first ever seed colius.

So we actually grew these out from seed.

And so you can see they've done quite nicely for us here.

And I do like that kind of columner sort of pillar look that they create almost in the landscape.

The color, I should say, also holds up really well in the sun also.

So it's got a nice burgundy color with the margins, kind of that lime chartreuse green color along the edges there.

So a great addition to your garden.

If you're looking for a colius, this is the Premium Sun Coral Candy Colius.

Across communities, gardens are often more than just a place to grow food.

They're also a place for people to connect, learn, and be a part of something larger than themselves.

Here at the Dr.

Eddie Warrior Correctional Center in Taft, Oklahoma, this garden is bringing OSU extension, master gardeners, and incarcerated people together working side by side throughout the seasons.

- I have a heart for the incarcerated.

A lot of them, of course, here are, all of them here are females, but working with nutrition, we had seen a lot of people who came out of incarceration and we saw how hard it was for them to get back up on their feet once they were back in society.

So we decided if we could teach them how to grow their own produce, they would be able to take that out into society when they left here.

And so we went to management and asked them, is that something that would be okay with them for us to do?

And they would love to partner with us, they said.

- It provides these participants here, these women, it gives them something to do, like a valuable job and skills.

And that's not only stuff that they'll be doing here.

When they get out of here, they could take that out and they could use it when they get out.

- I had got here in 24 and they had said they were going to be planting flowers and asked who wanted to do it.

And I was like, "You know what?

I need a job.

Why not?"

- It's very therapeutic down here and I really, really love the camaraderie with the girls.

And my friend said, "Hey, join agriculture."

And I was like, "Okay."

- The first year was extremely challenging, both from a resource point of view, but also from an agriculture point of view.

Resources were totally lacking.

As far as agriculture, the fields and the plots had not been used for several years.

The soil was absolutely horrible.

The growing conditions that summer was just amazingly horrible, but yet the ladies persevered and the result is three years later, we have an outstanding garden out there with a lot of different varieties of vegetables and things like that.

- I see somebody go from rock bottom depression to hope to they come to work every day and they see a seed they put in the ground and the next day it's a little sprout.

Who couldn't be happy about that?

I love it.

It's my favorite part.

I just see people come out of holes.

- What is it that you've seen that this garden has done for the ladies?

- I think the thing I could say the most that it has done is it gives them hope.

Not only the hope for the outside, but just in here to help keep their mental clarity and their spiritual clarity.

It's something to be able to put your hands in dirt and work out your frustrations in pulling weeds and keeping your garden tilled well.

- When you come down here and you ground yourself in the soil, you find peace, you find freedom, and you don't even come to work.

You just come to do something that you love.

- What's your favorite aspect?

I think the fact that I can't get the dirt out of my hands, so I know I'm putting in a hard day's work.

- Because when I do get out, I do want to do something with agriculture.

This has definitely shown me a direction because before I didn't have a direction.

I didn't know where I was going.

I didn't know what I was doing because somebody in my spot, our options are limited.

- I heard about Carabella's legacy through the warden, Wharton Sweat.

And so we kind of put our heads together to see what they wanted and what we could produce for them.

And so we started doing that.

- So my name is Maria Morris.

I'm the executive director of Carabel's Legacy and the chef of Carabel's Eats and Treats, which is a program within Carabel's Legacy for justice impacted women who are rebuilding their lives through culinary training and employment.

I figured out pretty fast how hard it was for me to find employment that was meaningful.

And so it all just started with really a closed door.

I wanted to be able to create other opportunities for women like me.

And with that, we fast forward to today and we've been able to serve 19 women with employment opportunities.

We've reunited 26 children to their mothers.

We kind of call ourselves a countercultured kitchen because the environment is definitely way more supportive.

Our motto here is it's not about what you can create, it's about what you can fix.

I can still go on after something maybe doesn't go exactly how it's planned, kind of like life, and that's why our program exists.

- It's like a full circle thing.

It's like planting the seed, nurturing it, maintaining it, harvesting it, and then for it to go back out into the community, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

It's so fulfilling.

It does something positive with the time that could be ultimately very negative and down.

It's very uplifting and positive.

- These ladies are really able to take some of the negative situations in this environment and make it more positive for themselves and for their families as well.

- How does the garden provide hope for you?

- It brings life.

You create life in a very dark place.

- Today we're so excited to have in the gardens Dr.

Ray Morans with the Zersey Society.

And if you love monarchs, you probably have heard his name around because he's one of the leading experts and you've got some exciting technology.

We're going to tag monarchs.

We'll walk through that process, but then you've got a real surprise for us at the end as how it's advanced really.

- That's right.

That's right.

- So we're tagging monarchs because we want to make sure that we're following that population, right?

- Correct.

The main reason that monarchs have been tagged since the 1940s is to better understand their migration.

And that's by putting on Monarch Watch tags 80 years ago, little sticker tags, paper tags on monarchs, that's how we found that they go to Mexico to spend the winter.

- Okay.

And so each one of those tags basically get glued onto a monarch?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Each tag's right here, just tiny little circular stickers with a little bit of glue and they're very easy to put on monarchs.

And I know a bunch of people who have done that here in Oklahoma, hobbyists, citizen scientists who enjoy doing that.

- Okay.

And of course when you're doing that, you take a lot of other data on that monarch too.

- That's right.

That's right.

- What is some of that data that you're collecting?

- Well, let's get a monarch out.

One thing we do is we weigh the monarch.

So we have a tiny little scale here that's extremely precise and accurate, but it costs only about 16 bucks.

- Okay.

- So this is a wonderful tool to have.

And we put the butterfly is already in an envelope.

We put it on the scale and we get the weight, write it down.

Very easy.

- So - You - Captured these at your home and here at the garden in the last day or - So.

Yes.

- And just this morning even.

- Yes.

They're - Kind of chill, right?

- Yeah.

But they're definitely alive.

They're moving around in there.

Absolutely.

They're doing just great.

- Okay.

So weight is one of - The - Factors.

What else are we looking at?

- We look to see if it's a male or a female.

There are multiple ways of doing that.

I like to look at the tip of the abdomen.

The abdomen is pointy on males.

It's not pointy on females, but you can also look for a little black spot On the male's wings.

And I've already done that with this one.

Another thing we do, and this is really important, is we want to study the incidence rate, the infection rate of a disease organism called OE.

OE is short for a scientific name that is very difficult to pronounce and spell.

It's a little protost, a little protozoan parasite that is microscopic and can be on monarchs.

And so I encourage anybody who wants to do monarch research at home to get these little circles of tape from an office supply company and catch a monarch and then carefully, gently apply the tape to the abdomen of the monarch on the side, on the bottom of the abdomen, on the other side.

And then you get a bunch of black scales and put it on your data sheet and then later on use a microscope.

Believe it or not, this is a really accurate microscope.

- Okay.

- Once again, about 17 bucks.

- Nice.

So this is - Really conducive to - Citizen scientists.

- Extremely conducive to citizen science.

It's affordable, portable, so big fan.

- So are you actually looking for the protozoa?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And what my good friend, Dr.

Emily Guest at the Oklahoma City Zoo has found in her research at the zoo in which people have been capturing monarchs there for 20 years or more, the Oklahoma City Zoo in the fall has very, very little of this disease, which is great, but we want it to stay that way.

So that's why we keep measuring it.

And you can see it with - It under a - Microphone.

Under the microscope, you can see tiny little spores that are shaped precisely like a football.

- Oh, okay.

Okay.

- So if you see a tiny little football, then it's a spore of OE.

Okay.

Another thing we do is we assess, well, are the wings in good shape or are they in bad shape?

This one, the wings are not torn, so it gets a five out of five.

And then I look at the scales and I ask myself, does this butterfly have all its scales?

Does it look brand new or do you see anywhere when you move it around in a light, do you see any - Yeah, I see - A little shimmer on something.

- You see some shimmer?

That's because it has lost scales.

Okay.

So I give this one a four out of five.

Five would be a perfect score.

This one gets a four.

Then we measure the wing length from the tip of the right front wing to a little white dot at the base.

And if the monarch isn't really big, we don't put a transmitter on it.

- Okay.

- But let's see, this one is 51 millimeters, that's big enough.

And then I like to take photos of the monarchs, so I - Have them - Put for posterity and you understand what that would be like, so I won't show that.

And then this monarch, this monarch doesn't weigh enough for a transmitter, but I am going to put the Monarch Watch tag on.

- Okay.

So each one of these tags have an identification number that you're linking to this butterfly.

- Yep.

- And then does that get entered into a database then?

- Yep.

This all goes to Monarch Watch in Lawrence, Kansas.

Okay.

So I've written down the tag number.

I have all the data I need for this Monarch.

So this Monarch was captured at my farm, so I'm going to let them go at my farm.

- Okay.

All - Right.

- Understandable.

- Yes.

Yes.

And those are the basic data we test for.

Now, I haven't looked to see if this guy has a OE yet, but turn on the battery on the microscope, turn on the light, look under here.

Oh boy, it's beautiful.

You want to see?

- Yeah.

- Do you see orange scales and white scales and black scales?

Yeah.

Do you see any tiny things much smaller that look like little football shaped specks of dust?

- No.

- This one's clean.

- Okay.

So this is the traditional way of tagging butterflies, but in the last couple of years, there's been technology that's been added to this mix.

It's a little more expensive than maybe the citizen scientists, but it's available to them as well.

- That's right.

- Can you share this with us?

- Sure.

The big invention of the last few years were tiny little transmitters.

I've got four of them right here, and they are indeed tiny.

Each one weighs about as much as a grain of rice.

Yeah.

And they have an antenna and a solar panel, and the solar panel is what powers them and it's very light.

These don't need a battery because they have a solar panel instead.

And then believe it or not, you glue these onto a monarch, you glue one of them onto a monarch, and we are able to track its migration.

- All right.

So let's talk about that process.

I mean, I have so many questions.

- Sure.

How are - You gluing these onto the monarch?

- Sure.

- And does it hurt the monarch?

Does it inhibit how they're flying?

- It does not hurt the monarch.

It does not inhibit their flight.

Matter of fact, last year I put these transmitters on.

I put 20 of them on in stillwater in my farm.

And of those 20, 14 made it to Mexico and seven made it all the way to central Mexico to over wintering colonies.

That's a really, really high success rate, higher than the big shot monarch experts at various research institutes elsewhere had predicted.

So they do just fine with these transmitters.

- Excellent.

All right.

So where are you actually gluing the - - Well, that's a great question to the butterfly.

You have to cut it off with a piece of scissors, with the scissors, and then you don't want to put glue on the solar panel.

Instead, you put glue on the underside of the solar panel and on the back of the monarch.

Okay.

The hardest part of the whole process is get the monarch to behave, because as you would imagine, they don't like having a foreign object placed on their back.

So I have the monarchs chilling in a cooler.

I know from plenty of experience that the monarchs are calm in there.

They can handle temperatures much lower than what I'm giving them in that cooler.

The temperature in there is in the 30s.

That chills them enough to calm them down.

I place a monarch inside of this little pinning board, and then I place some envelopes on top of it.

I weigh those down with quarters so the monarch can't fly.

And at that point, I put glue on the back of the monarch and glue on the underside of the transmitter, similar to Apple AirTag technology by which these transmitters give off a Bluetooth signal.

If you're using a Bluetooth device like your telephone, like your cell phone, your phone will detect the Monarch and send data to a server in New Jersey which uploads it to the free app, Project Monarch.

And then I get to see the data, but y'all can see the data too.

- Okay.

And it's not taking anybody's personal information.

- We got to make sure - That's clear.

- That's right.

We don't know anything about the person who detected the Monarch.

The person who detected the Monarch doesn't know they detected the Monarch.

- Right.

We just know that the butterfly was wherever at what moment.

That's right.

So this last year in 2025 was kind of one of the first years this really took off, this program.

Yes.

Tell us kind of your numbers that you were watching and what you were finding of this.

- Well, last year, 450 monarchs were deployed with transmitters in fall, fall of 2025, and we are able to follow them.

Anybody listening to this broadcast can get a free app called Project Monarch, and it's the same app I use to follow them.

And once you get that app and log in, you can see a map that shows lots and lots of Monarch icons.

And then you click on the icon and you can see its path.

You can see where it started, when it started, and then see where it has gone.

And some of these monarchs did the darndest things.

- Very neat.

So what were some of those things that you were seeing that kind of were surprising to you?

- Well, one thing that was really surprising was that so many of the monarchs from the east, like Ontario and Virginia, flew west into Oklahoma and then got stuck here due to strong south weather, strong south winds coming up from Texas.

But Oklahoma, a lot of people said, "Wow, I didn't know how important Oklahoma was to monarchs."

But last year's data shows it's really, really important.

- So you're finding that they're getting funneled through Oklahoma essentially?

- Absolutely.

They're getting funneled to Oklahoma and then funneled through Oklahoma.

If the winds are unfavorable, then they get stuck here, which means they need a lot of nectar plants.

So everybody, everybody in Oklahoma, if they could be planting flowers that bloom in the fall, that would be great because the monarchs really depend on them.

- So it's exciting technology.

These do are a little expensive for citizen scientists that are available to - People.

These cost $200 each.

- Okay.

- All right.

Yes.

And they are difficult to put on.

Okay.

So they're not for the faint of heart.

It really helps to know what you're doing.

- Okay.

Well, excellent.

Well, thank you so much for sharing this process with us.

- You're very welcome.

- I'm back with another great fall plant that you might want to consider adding to your garden.

And this is called the Mexican bush sage or Mexican sage short sometimes as it's known.

So this is a really great plant.

It is native to Mexico and Central America, not necessarily up here in Oklahoma, but it tends to do well.

Now it's hardy to zones eight through 10.

So we're right here on the northern edge of it in still water.

So I must say that sometimes it can not always come back, but for the most part, we usually do it, get it to come back every year.

And you can see when it returns as a perennial, it gets quite large.

It can grow anywhere from three to four feet wide and three to four feet tall.

Again, if it kind of gets bit back a little bit, it might not be as vigorous at recovering from that.

So just kind of know that it can be a tender perennial up here in northern Oklahoma.

Now, this is in the mint family, the Laminaci family.

And so because of that, you'll see that it has square stems and it also has some fragrance to the foliage.

But I think it's that fragrance that actually makes it a little bit resistant to rabbits and deer.

So that's a positive here.

Now, obviously the biggest feature on this plant is the purple flowers that get to be about eight inches long and they'll continue to bloom up this spike.

Now, actually what you're seeing, the purple is actually the calyx that is holding the white flower in there.

So you kind of get this bicolor look to it.

So it's these purple velvety calyx that you'll see, and then that's holding that bilateral symmetry white flower that is, that bilateral symmetry is kind of a prominent feature on salvias and sages.

And so this is what we have here featured.

And it's a great pollinator plant.

That's one of the things that is really a great selling point about this plant also is the fact that it starts blooming later in the season.

So a lot of times when all of your other flowers have kind of given up over the heat of the summer and they're kind of winding down, that's when this one is just now starting to come on.

This is the Mexican bush sage.

Again, a little bit of a tender perennial in Northern Oklahoma.

You're going to need to put it in full sun.

And as far as the soil goes, it's pretty tolerant of a range of soil.

You do want to give it some moderate water.

It doesn't like wet feet, but once it is established, it can be drought tolerant also.

So a great addition to your perennial garden, but make sure to give it some room to grow.

And as always, if you have any questions about today's show, feel free to reach out to your local county OSU extension office or connect with us on social media.

There are many great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

Join us next week on Oklahoma Gardening as we head out of Stillwater to visit a garden you won't want to miss.

Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening, Oklahoma.

- Welcome to Oklahoma Garden.

Got - It.

I was trying to make different words there.

Okay.

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

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Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our studio garden, and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful Stillwater gym.

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

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