- Join us today on Oklahoma Gardening as we celebrate the best of former host Ray Campbell as he shares how to prep your fall garden bed for planting spring asparagus.

Then he shows us how to plant a container veggie garden.

And finally, he gives us tips on picking a ripe watermelon.

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.

- Some of these nice days that we're having here in the middle of the winter is a good time to prepare your asparagus bed for next spring.

Asparagus is a good crop for Oklahoma Gardens.

It's adapted throughout most of the state, but since it's a perennial crop and because when you put this crop into the garden, it's going to be there for 10 or 15 years, then you wanna give some really special thought and consideration on soil preparation and being sure that you do the things right before you plant the crop.

Asparagus does well on a wide range of soils, but it certainly prefers a sandy lonely soil or soil high organic matter.

And if you've got an area in your garden that is relatively high in clay content or a tight soil that we have here, then about two months before you plant your asparagus, you may wanna get out and dig a trench such as we've, we've dug here, or just dig individual planting holes and fill this in with some sort of a, of an organic matter and do some other soil amendments so that this soil will be in good shape in time to plant next spring.

Now in the garden here, I've gone ahead and dug a trench about eight to 10 inches deep, and we're filling this in with manure and with compost.

And this is going to give us adequate time for this manure and compost to go ahead and decompose more, so that when we get ready to plant our asparagus in here in February or early March, we'll have a nice well prepared soil.

Another tip that you might wanna think about in planting asparagus in the garden or when you plant any perennial crops for that matter, not only asparagus but but also strawberries and blackberries and some of the other perennial crops, is to put these in an area of your garden, sort of to the side, an area where they're not gonna be in the way when you're not utilizing that crop and, and, and you won't have to continue to be moving around them if you're trying to plant the other parts of the garden.

So we've put these into one edge of the garden and have all of our perennials here together.

Now, asparagus is one crop that also can tolerate higher phs than some of our other crops can.

And so if you have your soil tested and you find that the pH of the soil is below 6.5 or so, you may want to add some lime to bring this up.

Now is a good time also to add lime at the same time you're preparing the soil and or supplying the soil with organic matter.

Asparagus can stand a pH up to about 6.8 to seven.

It can also stand a little higher salt content than can some of the other vegetable crops in the garden.

And so you see it can tolerate some more adverse conditions than some of our other crops can.

In fact, this might be one place that you would wanna put some of your wood ashes.

Sue talked about using wood ashes in the garden a few weeks ago, and the asparagus bed with limited qua with a limited quantity or amount of wood ashes would be a good place to utilize those.

So when I've got this trench or this hole filled with my organic matter, then I want to come in and just rake the soil back over it.

Allow this plenty of time then before planting to go ahead and decompose.

And this will really put this soil in good shape when I get ready to plant.

Then next spring, when I wanna plant my asparagus, I can come back in, open this furrow up, mix the organic matter with the soil a little bit more and have a real good well prepared bed here for asparagus planting.

Well, in speak of asparagus, let me share a few other thoughts and ideas with you.

It's not gonna be too long until we need to go in and knock down these old asparagus tops.

We'll probably do these in about two weeks because we've gotten several good hard freezes on them now and they've begun to die down.

And we can go ahead and knock these down.

One of the interesting things about asparagus is at this time of the year, you can really tell the male from the female plants and asparagus does have male and female plants who move asparagus in your garden or take your old row and divide those plants up.

You can also do that that pretty quickly.

Now, anytime that we know that the asparagus has really hardened off well with several hard freezes, we can go in and lift out some of those crowns.

If you're gonna be moving an old bed, then you may wanna take special note to those plants and move only the male plants or those without the berries.

Now we've dug a crown here just to give you some idea of the size and the weight of these things.

This is a crown here that has been in the ground for about five to six years and actually have already removed part of it.

So it was a really large crown.

Now, when you get ready to move your asparagus, and let me emphasize at the proper time to really plant asparagus is in February or March or, or about two months later than right now.

But you can go ahead and move some of these old crowns now if you wish.

But when you do this, you will dig the crowns up like this and then we can break those apart and separate them by some of their natural dividing spaces there and plant just that portion of the crown.

Then with the little spears or the begin, they're beginning to show there into the soil.

Much like this, we're probably giving you some instructions next February and March on how to plant asparagus.

But now here's the time to be out there to be thinking about preparing that soil because as I mentioned, asparagus is a pret of crop.

It'll be in the ground for 12 to 15 years, giving you adequate to actually very excellently yield in some parts of the state.

And so it, the time that you spend in preparing that soil now before planting will certainly pay off in the future.

We had a graduate student in a, in in agricultural education at one time that was doing a, a research study on how well Oklahoma State University was recognized and known throughout the state.

And part of his research was that he compiled a list of names of people associated with Oklahoma State University and had had people respond to that on the people that they recognized as most connected with Oklahoma State University.

And I was the third person, I was on that list - Really, - And I was recognized the third as the third most recognizable person on this.

Wow.

At first was the football coach.

Second was one of the other coaches, I forget either the wrestling or basketball, I'm not sure.

And third was the host of Oklahoma gardening.

So it was, I was able to bring a lot of, I think of attention to the university and what we do, and particularly in the area of horticulture.

You know, container gardening continues to be an increasingly popular way for homeowners and those with limited space to have a few plants in their landscape.

I know if you go out to our botanic garden at OSU and kinda look around out there, you'll see some fantastic ideas for container gardening.

Most of those, if not all of those are ornamental plants that are in those.

But as you walk into our garden in the front entrance on the north, you're greeted by two really large planters with cacti and succulent in them.

You go on into the garden, you'll see more planters with cacti and succulent more in traditional planters.

But as you walk on into the garden, you sort of also see more containers with plants in them that are maybe in some more non-traditional types of containers as well.

A little bistro table sets in the garden with a container plant on top of it.

We go in further.

We have some, some tall metal stands with containers, plantings in those as well.

You walk up by the, by our little shed at the, our office at the, by the deck in the patio area and on the wall there by the fence, you'll see some really fantastic hanging baskets with a variety of ferns and many other kinds of container plants.

But today I want to encourage you that if you thinking about maybe doing a container garden and you're limited on space, particularly for a vegetable garden, try something a little bit non-traditional and let's do a vegetable garden in containers or maybe like a a, a fairly enlarged kitchen garden, so to speak.

And that's what I'm going to do today.

Now, when we look at container plants and we use ornamentals, I think the, the rule of thumb usually is that you have a thriller, which is a big plant that catches your eye, a filler, something to fill in, and a spiller, something that goes over to the side.

We're not really gonna focus on that necessarily in our vegetable container garden, but we'll have some of the same concepts and some of the same rules in, in that as well.

But the first thing we want to do is choose the container, of course, and I'm using a little non-traditional container, maybe from some cont types of container plants.

And I think this is very fitting for what we're going to do.

And, you know, while this works well in a traditional pot of any kind, whether it's a clay pot or a plastic pot or, or whatever kind of pot, I kinda like this because it's just an old wash tubs.

Be sure though, whatever kind of container you use, that we have a hole for drainage in the bottom.

And I really wanna make that as a very important point in this particular little exercise we're going to do.

So I have a nice container with a hole in the bottom.

I'm gonna go ahead and fill that about halfway up right now with this potting soil.

This potting soil here is a little heavy and mainly is just made up of ground, ground pine bark, some peat moss and some vermiculite.

And it's kind of heavy, but yet it works pretty well.

I'm just gonna put it in the bottom of, of the, of the container here.

And then I'm gonna go with a lighter mix on the top.

This is a, a mix of also peat moss, pine bark perlite and also has some slow release fertilizer in it.

So we're gonna get a little bit of nutrient benefits from using that.

Of course, any potting mix that you buy at your local nursery or garden center or, or your garden supply stores is fine to use.

I do like those that have a little bit of slow release, fertilize them in in them though, because it just kind of gives us a little bit of extra boost as far as the nutrients needs of the plants are concerned.

And then it's just a matter of deciding what plants we're gonna put in there.

And I'm gonna put a variety of plants in there using plants that are dwarf types of plants that primarily are designed for this particular type of container.

Today I have a, a, a new, fairly new variety of tomatoes called red robin.

And the red robin is a cherry tomato.

It will produce all season long, I'm gonna put it right here.

It's pretty close to the center.

I have another little tomato called the patio.

It's a standard size fruit tomato.

So we have both the little cherry tomato or the salad tomato as well as the slicer tomato in the patio.

And I'm gonna start out with those in the center.

And then deciding what else I want to put in there.

In keeping with the tradition of using some plants that can be used, you know, throughout the, the, the cooking or the, or the utilization in the house.

I've got two cucumber plants here.

These are bush champion.

I've started those from seed and I'm gonna plant one of those on either corner like this, put my label there so I'll know what it is.

Put another one on this corner.

And these will give us a little bit of that spiller effect because although they're bush cucumbers, they're gonna make a little bit of a, of, of a, of a, of spilling or a a a trailing type.

Now I'm gonna fill in with herbs.

I've got a oregano, I've got a mixture of thyme and parsley in the same pot.

Put one of those over here.

I've got a basil, a little leaf basil that I'm also gonna stick in.

And then I've got my curly leaf, purple basil, another nice little plant.

It also gives some color in it.

I've got two peppers that I want in there.

Notice I'm really cramming these in, but still they're gonna work well.

I've have a jalapeno pepper I'm gonna put in close to my tomato.

I'm putting these in the center because they're gonna get a bit, a little bit larger than the rest of the plants.

And then I'm going to put in a sweet banana, another good addition to your culinary talents, if that's what you want to use them for.

But also a nice plant for the, for the container.

And then I've got my flat leaf parsley in with my thyme, but I really kinda like to have a curly leaf parsley as well.

So I'm gonna stick that one over here by the basil on this side.

And then with just a little bit of space left.

And I said it's gonna be very crowded, but that's okay because this is going, that's gonna be pretty well cared for since it's on your patio or just outside your kitchen window.

I wanna add a little bit of more color to it or something a little bit different.

So I've picked up a couple of nasturtium.

Now the nasturtium, of course, will not only give you some color, but they bloom.

And this is a variegated leaf on the nasturtium.

But also the good thing about it is the flower of the nasturtium is an edible flower.

So certainly you could pick those off and use them in salads or as a garnish to your plate or however you'd like to do that.

So we have a really nice little container garden here, primarily of vegetables, our tomatoes, our peppers, our bush champion cucumber, our herbs, and then just the nasturtiums for color.

Although the mix does have a little bit of slow release fertilizer in it, I want to be sure that I'm giving adequate fertilizer with a minimal amount of care.

So I'm gonna put a couple of tablespoons of a slow release fertilizer just scattered over the top of my container.

And actually, this should really be enough nutrients for these plants or enough fertilizer for these plants or food for these plants for probably two or three months.

So I'll water it in.

Good.

Then we can set it in a bright, sunny location just outside the, the door on the patio or the deck.

And voila, you've got a very nice little vegetable garden in a contained place that you can enjoy throughout the summertime with a minimum amount of care.

Primarily it's just keeping it watered and harvested.

I was doing a segment on how to select a, a ripe watermelon, but you selected, and, and you're exactly right, I went down to Perkins to our research station at Perkins and selected a great big, really, really nice crimson sweet watermelon that was perfect as far as all the signs of it being ripe.

And so I brought that and took it into the studio and I brought one, only brought that one watermelon.

So I brought it into the studio at OETA and we were doing still on the table in the studio with one, one chance.

And so I showed everyone how to select the ripe watermelon.

And I said, but the only way to really tell if that watermelon is ripe is to cut it open.

And so I cut that watermelon open and it was green.

It was only ripe right around the edges where the, where the seeds were.

And the middle was still pretty green.

And so I, I pulled it up in front of my face like that so no one could see it.

And the, and the videographer, the photographer.

So he kept saying, put it down, put it down, put it down.

I went.

And so they finally closed the show.

But that was so embarrassing.

I couldn't show that beautiful rot watermelon.

But you know, if we'd had another watermelon and done another takeover, they I would've done it - Again.

I mean, I think that's still one of the number one most asked questions is how to pick a ripe watermelon.

- So I still get people asking me about that.

Yeah, - We are back out here at the OSU Student Farm and joining me today is one of my favorite people.

Ray Campbell, former host of Oklahoma Gardening Ray.

Good.

Be here.

Good to be here, Casey.

Thank you so much.

And you're gonna redeem yourself a little bit, right?

We're gonna find us a ripe watermelon today.

We're not live, don't worry.

Yeah.

Okay.

- Yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna, I I'm gonna do my best.

Okay.

Yeah.

But you, as you saw on the clip earlier, this was way back not long after Oklahoma Garden first started back in the mid seventies or maybe even early eighties.

And we were doing the show at OETA on the tabletop demonstration and they were showing how to do a, a ripe watermelon, how to choose a watermelon that was ripe.

And I only had one watermelon and I didn't have a chance to redo it.

And I went through all the signs of what makes of ripe watermelon ripe to the eye, and to the feel.

And then we cut the watermelon and lo and behold it wasn't ripe.

- And we, we got a few backups here - Just in case.

Yeah, I got some backups today.

So - What the, the good thing about it being live though is there's no evidence of that tape.

Well, that's good too.

Yeah.

Okay.

- Yeah, so, so you know, maybe I can redeem myself 'cause I do know how to choose a good watermelon.

Correct.

And over again, and this is watermelon season still in Oklahoma.

It will be for still a few more weeks.

It's been a very good year for watermelons.

We just recently had a watermelon festival in Rush Springs, Oklahoma, the watermelon capital of the world.

And so everybody goes down there and takes a look at the melons with all these melons.

How do you know that you're going to get a good ripe watermelon?

- Right.

- Well there are some signs that point that way.

Okay.

And one of the signs that we wanna look at is if the, is the stem you ideally you'd like to get a watermelon with still some of the stem on it.

Okay.

Because that way you have, you have a, a better chance if there's still a curl or tendril on the stem and it's really, really dried up, that's a pretty sure side of the melon is ripe.

And also the watermelon stem close to the, the melon itself will have a little hair or fuzzy like growth on it.

If those are still there and very prominent, the watermelon is probably not ripe, it's probably still green - Because it's still taking up water to make those hydrated.

Right, - Exactly.

Yeah.

Yes.

And then if it gets smooth, like this one's really smooth, then that watermelon it's is good chance that it's ripe.

Okay.

Another thing I like to look at is what they call the ground color.

It's where the melon was on the ground.

And if that ground color is a nice yellow smooth look, then that's a good sign that the melon is ripe as well.

And you may see some webbing and scarring on the melon itself.

And I wasn't really aware of this, but I read from the National Watermelon Board that that scoring scarring and webbing that you see on there is really a sign of good pollination.

And the more there is of that on the melon, the sweeter the melons going to be.

- So when this is a small ovary in the flour, that bees in there actually scarring it a - Little bit.

Yeah.

Scarring it.

Okay.

Yes it is.

Okay.

That's exactly right.

Interesting.

And then this, this happens to be a crimson sweet.

And that was the same melon we had in my big fiasco where I had green melon.

And I like the crimson sweet because it also tells you something, you can feel the melon and the melon is smooth and waxy feeling it's probably not ripe.

But if you feel the melon, run your hand over it and it's sort of a dull dry feel and has little ridges on it, they'll have the good ripe watermelon will begin to ridge a little bit.

Okay.

Like these do.

And so, you know, there's, there's a lot of signs you can look for.

- And you were talking about the yellow belly though.

- Yes.

- So like on this one, you wanna make sure it's not soft or - Exactly.

This one's - Not soft, but there's a little bit of a Yeah.

But - If you look at the one on the end, I think it is down there you'll see that it's even No, the second one.

I'm sorry, that one's probably even a little bit more.

- Yeah.

- And, and and be sure and look at the blossom end.

If the blossom end is soft, then that melon is way over ripe.

- Okay.

Yeah.

These seem to be good, but this one has a little insect damage.

Yeah.

But not all the way through.

But you wanna make sure nothing has gone through to the watermelon.

Right, - Exactly.

Check it, you know, you check it over good inspected and then some people like to hit on it or thump on it and see what it feels like.

I don't know.

I get different sounds when I do that, so I'm not sure how reliable it is.

But some people say listen, for a good hollow cell, if it's real hollow and, and bounces back on your hand, bounces back, which this one does, it's probably ripe if it's real dull and thud.

A thud is real dull.

It's over ripe.

- Okay.

- So let's, let's take a look at these.

And, and the best way though, as I mentioned on my show back in the seventies, the best way to tell if a watermelon is ripe of course is the knife test.

- Okay.

- And so we get our knife.

- So that's the winning one.

You think this - Is the - Winning one?

I'm gonna try this one.

- If not, we got something to choose from.

- And it's nice when they already sort of crack the oak - There.

Good.

They cracked a little bit.

So that's a good sign.

And I think wanna thank the people of the student farm for growing these melons.

You know, it's really a good, a good addition to our daily bread food bank here in Stillwater.

'cause that's all, oh, - Look at that.

Oh, look at that.

- Beautiful, beautiful watermelon.

Good Crimson Sweet Melon developed by Kansas State University.

It's one of the choice watermelons to grow in Oklahoma still.

And we, we will just, we'll just, okay.

What do, let's just cut that again.

There you go, - Casey.

Ah, thank you sir.

- I don't have to work for mine.

It came out.

- Shall we try it?

Cheers.

- Cheers to you.

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

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

Tune in next week as we celebrate the best of former host, Sue Gray, right here on Oklahoma Gardening.

Yeah, it's been a great deal of fun.

I've enjoyed it.

You all have been a great audience.

We've enjoyed hearing from - You.

Now next week we're going to introduce you to the new host - 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.

You 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 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.