- [Presenter] Oklahoma Gardening is a production of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service, as part of the Land Grant Mission of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University, dedicated to improving the quality of life of the citizens of Oklahoma through research-based information.

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

It's time to get the garden ready.

Today on the "Best of Oklahoma Gardening," we will show you how you can build an easy-access garden bed.

I'll then show you the importance of hardening off your transplants.

Then, we turn our attention to warm-season crops, as we look at eggplant.

Jim Shrefler is talking watermelon, and finally, we can't ignore those pests that sometimes find our garden.

(bright music) (tool clicking) - Those look like an ombre of sunset colors.

It's not the flowers right?

- No, we don't- (bright music) (weeds thump) - We are here once again in our backyard concept with another raised bed design, and joining us again is Steve Upson with the Noble Research Institute.

And Steve, thanks again for coming and sharing another idea with us.

- You're welcome.

- So, we know you're fan of tires, but this is a different take on it.

So, tell us about the pros and cons of this particular design.

- Okay, well, you refer to this as the Easy Access Garden Bed.

Easy access because it is easy in terms of accessing, we're looking at waist high.

So, it's a raised, raised bed, right?

- Perfect, yeah.

No bending.

- That's the idea.

This is the highest profile bed that we have.

No bending , okay, for adults.

- And it provides a lot of planting area, moreso than some of the others.

- Yeah, this has the largest surface area, planting area and it's 40 inches wide, which is wider than the other, most of the other beds.

It also incorporates little more soil depth, a little bit more opportunity to grow a myriad different crops, and instead of having a multiple, maybe say the modular type beds, sometimes this one bed will satisfy an entire, you know, family.

It does take a little longer to construct.

- Yeah.

This isn't something that you would make and take and move it.

You're gonna build this in place, right?

- Right.

It'll be in place.

It sets on the semi tires, like you can see here.

We have six tires.

You can put other combinations together and make it as long as possible, but from a logistics standpoint and just making it feasible, we found that this arrangement, three stacks of two, works really well for most backyards.

- And the semi tire just makes it larger.

Could you still use the regular vehicle tires?

- You can, it's a little bit less sturdy.

These tires are extremely sturdy.

They're built of course, stronger, for trucks.

They're a little more difficult to work with, so you wanna make sure that you have plenty of time and take your time to do it, 'cause it does take a little bit more time to put together, but once it's, once it's together, it doesn't move.

This is a very heavy bed.

- So we've got our stacks of tires.

Tell us a little bit about that interface of the soil and the tires.

- Okay, so we have, the liner here is just corrugated roofing tin.

It actually bends up underneath and lays on top of the upper tire.

The tires support the whole structure, obviously, and then we have a crack in between, between both both sides, and that allows the roots to grow down, through the actual container here, into the soil that we use to fill the bed, the tires.

- So, there is soil in each of these tires, okay.

- There's soil in the tires, it's just regular garden soil, and what we prefer up top here is more of a, you know, a more of a potting type of soil, but it is heavy enough that you could put a good sandy loam soil and then amend that with potting soil if you'd like, 'cause it can withstand the weight.

- So, what about the ends?

'Cause obviously the sheet metal doesn't curve up on the ends.

- You could turn the sheet metal up on its end, so it would conform to the shape of the bed, the tire, but in this case we, to make it look more attractive we've just lined it with two by treated, two by, and it makes it look a little, like I said, a little nicer.

It solves a problem of trying to hook the metal, arrange it that way.

You stain the wood, and then, of course, we try to treat this metal, we'll put some coating on the inside to keep it from rusting as quick.

- Okay, and then we've got our wood stakes here, simply to help provide more support for any accessories we do on top?

- Right, yeah, it's, all the wood is part of the frame, and then we've got these little pipe here to accept any bows or like you said, any trellis type of arrangement, attachment, accessory you're wanting to build on top of the bed.

- All right, so we gotta again, a nice low frame here for a season extension, but as some of your other beds have shown, we can do trellis.

- Simple by changing this out.

- Right, yeah.

And you can customize 'em any way you want to.

You could put a little different size of pipe here if you wanted to go with a little smaller pipe for a trellis like we have on some of other beds.

But this is the design we came up for this particular little mini micro tunnel or hoop house on top of this bed.

- All right, well it looks like a really nice addition.

Something that you could easily kind of incorporate to kind of be a fence, you know, on a deck or something that you could harvest from as well, so.

- I think this is one of our more attractive beds.

And another nice thing about it, Casey, is that because of the indention between the tires, you can actually put your foot up under the bed and it takes some of the weight off of your back.

So I guess if you say this is an ergonomically correct position to be working with, instead of bending your back, you bend, you put your leg here and that way you don't have to bend over as much.

So it's, this is one I think my wife's favorite bed.

I keep bringing her up and lot this because I bounce a lot of ideas off her.

She tells me what's, if I'm sane or not.

- Well, that means it's tried and true.

So thank you for sharing this idea with us Steve.

- You are very welcome.

It's been fun.

(upbeat banjo music) - This is the time we all get antsy to start putting our tomatoes and peppers out in the garden.

You wanna hold off really, depending on where you are in the state of Oklahoma until about mid-April.

Of course, southern Oklahoma's gonna get warmer faster than northern Oklahoma, so you may be able to plant a little bit sooner in the month of April.

Really the best thing to do though is check your weather forecast your 10 day forecast and see what the forecast is predicting as far as warm weather or cooler fronts moving in still, because our warm season crops will not like cooler temperatures.

So be patient, it's definitely gonna pay off.

However, there is something that you can do with your transplants if you've been growing them.

You can see we have peppers that are ready to get out into the garden, but we're not gonna plant them just yet.

First of all, we want to do what's called hardening 'em off and that is basically pushing our babies out of the nest, in essence.

Here in the greenhouse they've been receiving the ideal conditions.

You can see there's no wind in here.

They're getting plenty of sunlight.

They've been getting watered regularly and so they've been just growing great which is what you wanna provide for new transplants.

And also to get those seedlings germinated we wanna give 'em the best care to get 'em off to the proper start.

However, when we plant them out in the garden they're gonna be exposed to all new sorts of environments.

So we want to go ahead and start transitioning them, acclimating them to those environmental factors that they're gonna experience.

And so the best way to do that is go ahead and take them outside just for a few hours.

So you can see here I've got a garden cart that I'm just gonna load up our transplants and just take them outside so that they can start to experience what life is going to be like once they're moved outdoors.

When you move your transplants outdoors you don't necessarily wanna put them in full sun even though they might have been growing under a grow light inside or even in the greenhouse.

What they're gonna experience outdoors in partial sun is gonna be about equivalent because they're not used to the intense, bright, full sun of the afternoon.

So early morning, put 'em out for a few hours or a few hours in the afternoon and each day sort of expand that range that they're outdoors in order to acclimate them and get them used to the brighter sun.

The other thing is you can slowly take them further and further out of the shady area and put them in more sun as well.

So to start off, you might find a shady tree.

Even a deciduous tree that's lost its leaves is gonna provide some of that dappled shade.

Perhaps a covered porch or a patio would also work as well.

Now the other thing you're gonna notice about these plants is they're already starting to experience some of those Oklahoma winds that are kind of brushing their vegetation and that's going to actually dry them out faster than maybe what they were in their previous location.

So we do wanna make sure that we're still checking them for moisture, however you know, letting them be a little bit thirsty not to the point of wilting, but allowing them to experience that thirst just a little bit is going to get them used to the outdoor environment.

'Cause again, once you plant them out into the garden they're gonna have a lot more soil to grow into that you're gonna have to monitor.

So having them in a cart like this allows you to kind of monitor them more closely before you plant them in the garden.

Now I'm gonna kind of spread these out a little bit so that they experience a little more of that wind but I'm gonna leave them on this cart so that I can simply roll them back indoors when I need to.

You wanna make sure to check the weather.

If the temperature is gonna be mild that evening you might go ahead and leave them outside because not only do we need to get them used to the sunlight but they still might experience some cooler nights.

Now we wanna make sure that they're not too cold.

If the temperature does get into the forties or fifties you might wanna go ahead and bring them back in for that evening.

Another thing that you can do to kind of get them ready for those Oklahoma winds is you can actually put an oscillating fan on them.

So occasionally that will go past them causing them to have disturbance and again, kind of build up that strength and prepare them for our outside winds.

So all of this, again, is just kicking those little babies out of the nest, preparing them for that full sun garden location where they're gonna be exposed to more winds and also bright sunlight.

This process is called hardening off and you wanna do this about a week or two before you plant your vegetable garden.

(country western music) (country western music continues) - If you haven't tried planting eggplant in the garden, it's a fun plant to plant, so I'd highly suggest it.

It is in the family with tomatoes and peppers, so you wanna make sure to rotate it, and put it in a different location than where, maybe you've had those previously planted.

Now, we've featured eggplant now on Oklahoma gardening before, and a lot of times when people think of eggplant, they think of those large, deep purple fruit.

However, we have a white eggplant, and like I said, we've actually even featured the white one, a Japanese variety before, but today we're featuring a new selection that was an All America winner for 2022, and this is known as Icicle.

Now, eggplant originally got its name because of the white fruit that looks like eggs hanging on a plant, but this icicle variety is going to be a little bit longer, and more cylindrical than some of the smaller, rounder white eggplants that you might have grown previously.

Now, this particular variety does not sacrifice the taste or the texture, so you're still gonna get that same great taste and texture, but it also does not have as many spines on it.

So, when you're harvesting, it's not gonna be as painful to get in there and get those fruit.

Now, Icicle will get tall, it'll get about 48 inches tall, and so you might wanna provide it with a little bit of support, because as it gets more of those fruits on there, it's gonna get heavier, and of course we know, in Oklahoma, we have some really strong winds.

Now, the height on this is a little deceiving because of our raised bed here, but actually our soil sunk down, and so it's growing a little bit further, probably about a foot down, than what it appears as the top of this bed, but actually that kind of just supports it, along the sides of the bed there.

So, we've got a rather tall plant here, and you can see we've got several different fruits that are growing in here.

We've got two plants.

We've got another one back here that has several long ones that are starting to develop as well.

They have these nice purple flowers that kind of look like what you might find in the solanaceae family.

These are purple, that kind of remind you of maybe the nettle that you see out in the wild, but again, this one is the edible eggplant.

So, when you harvest this, you wanna make sure that you are using pruners and not actually just twisting the fruit off.

This one actually got stuck between two branches and so it kind of pinched the bottom half of this fruit.

The other nice thing about Icicles is a lot of times when we have these white fruit, they will start to brown a little bit once they are cut, but icicle tends to hold its true white color a little bit longer than some of the other varieties.

So, if you're looking for an eggplant to add in your art garden, you might try Icicle.

(country western music) We are down here at the Wes Watkins Research and Extension Center in Lane, Oklahoma.

And joining us today is Dr. Jim Shrefler.

Dr. Shrefler, thank you for having us down here again today, and it looks like we're talking about watermelon.

- Pleasure to be here, yes.

- One of our favorites in the summertime, so.

Are you, can you tell us all the keys to how to grow a good crop of watermelon?

- Okay, yeah.

And to start with you, if you live in an area where you have the right environment and soils, and things like that, that's the first starting point.

It's very important.

- So, what are some of those soils?

- And these soils, this soil here is, is called a fine sandy loam soil.

Generally for watermelon, they will do best on some sort of a pretty sandy soil.

A deep sand is actually maybe one of the better soils.

- So, good drainage.

- And good drainage, yes.

- So, if you don't have deep sandy soil, maybe a raised bed, is that what we?

- That, sure.

That would be good, you know, and you can grow watermelons, I don't wanna discourage, but you grow watermelons in a lot of good places.

If you, again, a deep top soil is important because they have a deep rooting root system.

- So, when should we be thinking about starting our watermelon crop?

- Okay, many people wind, well they're anxious and want to get, you know, in the middle of April, end of April they say, we're past the freeze.

I want to, last freeze, I want to plant my watermelon.

- Right, April 15th, they gotta go out and plant.

- Right, but, and that's maybe okay for tomatoes but watermelon's a very warm-natured crop, and really to get good seedling, seed germination, seedling development, plant establishment, you really need that soil to be warmer.

So, I kind of like to wait almost until the 1st of July or of, excuse me, of June actually, to plant watermelons.

- Okay, sort of like okra, right?

- Kind of like okra, yes.

Yeah, kind of like okra.

- And when you're planting those, do you direct sow, or do you start with transplants?

- You can do it both ways.

Again, for my recommendation for people that unless you really need to use transplants, if you're growing seedless melons, for example, my recommendation is direct seed.

You're gonna have healthier plants, and again, if you wait until that soils nice and warm, you'll put the seed in the ground and they'll be up within four or five days, and that plant will just take off growing, if you keep it watered, so.

- All right, well it looks like your crop is doing pretty well here, and we're kind of shooting this ahead of time, so this is not, I know we're gonna air it next May, but this is not May.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that.

But yeah we've got a good crop here so you can expect that.

Tell us a little bit about how much you've been growing watermelon out here at Lane.

- Okay, well we've been here at this research station and actually I'm the only horticulturalist here now, but 20 years ago or less than that, 15 years ago, there was a pretty good group of people.

All of them involved somewhere other with watermelon 'cause it's an important crop.

- [Dr. Scheffler] And it's a good crop because it's a crop that'll be productive even in our hot, these hot summers like we're having when the temperatures above 95 degrees everyday, so.

- Well, yeah, we're mid-summer right now.

And tell us how our watermelon are progressing.

- These watermelon vines are doing pretty quite well actually.

We have some fruit that are probably about three weeks or so away from being ripe.

Now we've kind of been lucky here.

I have not used any fungicides on this crop.

And that is, if you were really growing watermelons, and wanted to protect them from the hazard of disease that will affect the foliage, and there's several, you would wanna put a fungicide on there.

- Okay.

- Again, I didn't do it.

Haven't done it.

And we've been lucky 'cause these vines are very healthy in a year when you have pretty dry conditions.

- [Host] As far as watering goes, I know watermelons like water, but they also like good drainage as mentioned by the soil.

- Right, and you might be able to see, these are planted on somewhat of a raised bed, a little bit hill.

A little hill.

And that's to improve the drainage, you know, even though it's a sandy soil, if you do get a real wet period, they can still, the plant's roots get waterlogged and that can set them back.

- Right, and you have this under a drip irrigation?

- [Dr. Scheffler] And we use drip irrigation, and that's just a very efficient way to be able to irrigate.

You put the water right where it's needed for the plant to use it, and you're not watering the rest of the soil surface and encouraging new weed growth.

- Right, right.

The big question, I guess, and it looks like we've got some watermelon that are coming on.

When do you know they're ripe?

- Well, one way to determine if they're ripe down in this area is watch when the wildlife start feeding on them.

And you might, sometimes it might be crows, it might be coyotes, it might be raccoons, it might be foxes.

- [Host] So they're the best indicator.

- [Dr. Scheffler] They all seem to know pretty well when that fruit is ripe.

- Okay, so that's also a problem though.

- That is a problem, yes.

That is a problem.

- So once you find out that they're signaling that they're ripe, what do you do about that?

- Okay, there's, again, working with, you know, for a commercial grower, they might wanna put in some tall fences around their fields and various other things that, it's a serious problem though.

But for a small planting and a home garden situation, something that we've found, and we've tried this several years now, is to just stretch some netting, bird netting, horticulture fabric could work over the vines.

When you know that the fruit are just about ripe, go ahead and cover 'em.

And that keeps those animals away from them, so.

- [Host] So they just don't want to climb underneath that netting to get in there?

- They don't climb under it.

They don't climb underneath it, no.

I mean, I haven't seen them even try to eat through peck, the birds don't peck through the netting either.

We haven't seen that so far at least.

- All right.

- So it's just an idea.

So if you have some materials like this around, just don't throw 'em away, keep 'em.

And you can put 'em to use.

You'll only have it on there for a couple weeks.

You know, just put it on when those fruit are ready and then remove it, so.

- It seems like a really easy mechanical method that it it would be a good deterrent for those pests.

- Sure, sure.

That's something easy to do.

- Excellent.

Well thank you for sharing this Dr. Scheffler.

(gentle music) The word harlequin means to be fancily dressed or ornate.

And it's no wonder that this bug that I wanna introduce you to is called the harlequin bug because it is definitely ornate in its decoration.

You can see that it's got an orange and black pattern to it.

So don't confuse it with the lady bug because this one is not a good insect to have in your garden.

Unfortunately, this insect will over-winter in some of your plant debris.

So this is one of the reasons why it's often good to go ahead and clean out your garden in the fall and get rid of that plant debris.

So as you can see, the numbers of bugs that we have on our mustard greens here and also our pok choi behind us are increasing.

In fact, they're kind of headed over towards our broccoli, our kale, and our Swiss chard.

So we wanna make sure we get some control on this.

One of the things about the harlequin bugs, it's almost as bad as the squash bugs as far as the numbers can get outta control so quickly.

And that's because after two weeks, after the harlequin bugs begin to emerge out of that plant debris, you'll find that those females can start laying eggs already.

So you might recognize those eggs because they have a uniform pattern where they create this double-barrelled, and the barrels, the eggs, look like a barrel shape, but they're white and black striped.

But they're in double rows, typically.

So you'll find those often on the underneath side of the leaves.

So you'll wanna be looking for those.

Usually there's anywhere from 10 to 12 eggs in kind of a cluster there.

And so after two weeks of emerging, those females are gonna start laying those eggs.

And in the early spring when the temperatures are cooler, those eggs will hatch within about 20 days.

But as those temperatures warm up through the summer, those eggs can hatch within five days.

So you can see how your numbers of bugs can really increase over that season.

Now it does take a little while for those small larva, or nymphs, to actually develop into a mature adult.

However, you will get about three to four generations of harlequin bugs each season.

Now we still wanna treat these.

I know our mustards are starting to age out now at this point.

And then obviously our pok choi behind us, you can see is starting to bolt.

So it's kind of past its prime.

You might think, you know, "I don't wanna spray or do anything with this.

I'm just gonna rip them out."

However, while Brassicas are the preferred choice, they will go after your warm season crops if they don't have anything else to eat.

So you still wanna make sure, even if you're taking these out.

- That you might be vigilant about watching them on your tomatoes, your okra, your squash, your corn.

They will go after those warm season crops later in the season if they don't have anything else to eat.

So how do we control these Harlequin bugs?

Well, if you just have a few numbers, one of the things to do is to kind of look at your plants and if you see a few of these, just go ahead and pick 'em off and destroy 'em somehow.

Get rid of 'em.

And also make sure to be checking the underside of the leaf, again for that double row of the black and white striped barrel eggs.

And you can either smash those with your fingers.

They're not very big, actually, they're very tiny.

So you can kind of smash those with your fingers or simply pull off that leaf.

And again, dispose of that.

Make sure you do destroy those eggs, so that they don't actually hatch somewhere else and cause a problem later on.

If you have larger numbers like we do, there's two options to spray.

And so an organic option that you can use is something that has either neem oil or pyrethrins in it.

Both of those are labeled and organic.

The nice thing about using an organic spray is the fact that there is no pre-harvest interval date, and that is the number of days that you need to wait before applying this chemical until you can actually harvest your crop.

So the PHI, as it's known, is zero.

So you can apply this up 'til the time you are actually harvesting.

Now the one thing you wanna be cautious of with neem oil, as the name implies, is it is an oil.

So you wanna make sure to spray this and apply this on your plants either early in the morning or later in the day.

Because putting an oil on your plants when the sun is at its brightest and hot can actually do some damage to the leaf itself.

It's sort of like putting baby oil on your skin and then going laying out in the sun.

It can really affect those plants and cause them to burn.

So be cautious if you're using neem oil in the heat of the day.

You really wanna do that early morning or in the evening.

So that's one option is to use neem oil or pyrethrins.

Another more synthetic option is to use either carbaryl or Malathion.

And those are also options.

Now they do have a pre-harvest interval that you wanna be aware of.

Again, depending on what crop you're applying it to, whether it's a mustard or your broccoli or your kale, you wanna be aware of that as well.

So you can see the damage that they do cause to your plants and why you wanna treat these, because of their piercing sucking mouth parts.

So what they actually do is stick their tiny little straw into these plants and basically help themselves to a kale smoothie by sucking out the plant juices out of there.

And each time they pierce those plants, it's causing that damage onto that leaf, and that damage is what you really see.

So either be looking for the bug itself, or if you start to see kind of this cloudy effect and this damage on your leaves, then that's a telltale sign that you might have the Harlequin bug.

So be on the lookout and make sure to manage those before your numbers get out of control.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Next week on the Best of Oklahoma Gardening, we turn our attention to the prettier side of the landscape.

(upbeat music) - All right, have I got one?

Cheers to spring.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] To find out more information about show topics as well as recipes, videos, articles, fact sheets, and other resources, including a directory of local Extension offices, be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

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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.

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Additional support is also provided by Pond Pro Shop, Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants.

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