- [Narrator] 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.

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

Today on Oklahoma gardening, we start the show off by cleaning out the garden.

Ray Morans shares with us about pollinators in the garden.

And finally, we head north to learn about the ecosystem in the tall grass prairie.

(upbeat music) (tool clicks) - Look like an ombre of sunset colors.

It's not the flowers, right?

(weeds thump) (host laughing) (upbeat music) - It's that time of year to start a clean slate in the garden, and if your garden looks anything like our garden, you probably have a few dead plants remaining that need to be cleaned out, but really at this point, late in the winter, early in the spring, we wanna freshen everything up by cleaning it out, getting rid of both the leaf debris and also some of the dead plant to allow that warm sunshine to get in there and penetrate the new growth of our garden again.

Now, before you just start cutting everything back, there's a few things to consider.

One is whether that plant is an annual or perennial.

If your garden is like ours, we have a few annuals that we missed last fall when we were cleaning 'em out.

and remember, an annual is a plant that you annually have to plant and you annually have to remove it out of your garden.

So typically they are removed at the end of the fall after that first killing freeze.

However, we do have some Cupheas here and also some Shrimp Plant that got left behind.

So we're gonna go ahead and take those out.

Now, these particular annuals have pretty extensive root systems and so I'm just gonna use my loppers to cut 'em back.

However, if you have some smaller bedding plants, like marigolds or begonias, you might just pull those up from the base of the plant and gently shake the soil off 'cause you don't wanna lose that garden soil, but annuals also can be rather large, too.

So like you might have a candlestick plant, for instance, that can get up to eight feet tall.

Again, that's a tropical annual, so you wanna go ahead and remove it, and again, loppers would probably be the best way to do that.

So again, just gonna take these and cut back.

(upbeat music) Now I've raked these leaves aside just so that we can highlight the next thing that we're gonna work on.

Normally I'd go ahead and cut these back too, but I wanted to talk to you about these.

So these are not annuals, these are daylilies, which means they are herbaceous perennials here in Oklahoma.

So the next thing, after you've gotten your annuals out of the way, you wanna look at whether you have perennials and depending on what kind of perennial you have, is going to depend on how you treat it.

So with herbaceous perennials, you're going to cut them back all the way to the ground.

So this includes things such as hostas if there's any dead hosta leaves, a lot of your ornamental grasses, daylilies, irises, things like that, because what happens is they are perennials, so they're gonna come back year after year but they come back from the base of the plant or the crown of the plant, not from any of this remaining vegetation that's above ground.

All of this is dead material.

So again, we wanna get rid of this to allow that sun to penetrate the crown of that plant and cause it to grow.

You can see in some cases here, we've already got some regrowth happening, and it's really critical that you go ahead and prune these back now, cut 'em back, so that it allows that new vegetation to regrow and freshen that plant.

If you don't cut it back, it's not gonna be detrimental to the plant, however, it's gonna leave a kind of an unsightly look because you're gonna have that dead mixed with the green vegetation which just is really hard to remove later on, once you've got that green growth growing on.

So at this point, don't worry about cutting it too much.

Some of that new growth, it's fine, but we're gonna go ahead and cut all of this back.

(upbeat music) Now we've talked about herbaceous annuals and perennials, and there's some plants that you might not know exactly whether it's an annual or perennial such as salvias.

There can be both perennial salvias and annual salvias, so you wanna make sure you know what you're dealing with.

However, even a lot of your perennial salvias such as this, you can see they may regrow from some of the upper growth.

However, just to give it a fresher look, we're gonna go ahead and take it back to the base of that plant.

Now, when we talk about perennials also, and you can see this is sort of a woody plant, there are specifically woody perennials, in which case, a lot of times we're talking more of like shrub, like crepe myrtles, abelias, spireas and things like that, when you're looking at those shrubs, you wanna determine whether they are spring blooming or summer blooming before you start chopping.

So let's go take a look at a spring blooming woody perennial.

- So here we have some spring flowering quince.

So this is an example of an early spring blooming woody perennial.

So in this case, you do not want to prune this plant just yet.

In fact, you wanna wait until after it blooms because this plant and a lot of other early spring blooming plants such as forsythias and lilacs, they produce their buds on last season's growth or what's called the old wood.

And so if you were to prune this, if there's anything that is maybe has died in there or anything like that, that you wanna go ahead and remove or perhaps you wanna keep it in check, the best time to do that is after it flowers, not just yet.

So go ahead and let it flower.

In fact, you can see some of those flower buds are already on here.

If you just can't help yourself and you wanna go ahead and prune it, you can prune it knowing that you're gonna take off those flower buds.

And if you just do a few select branches, go ahead and take those branches inside and they will actually, the warm air inside will force those branches to start blooming for you.

Now, here's an example of another woody perennial that we can go ahead and prune.

And you can see, it actually is semi evergreen.

So you can see some of the leaves are still remaining on there.

We've got a lot of this woody vegetative growth that is still existing up above the ground.

And so basically on plants such as this and also like the popular crepe myrtle, you can go ahead and prune these back.

Now, it will, if you do not prune it back, it's going to re-sprout from some of these same buds that are up here.

A lot of times, especially with abelias, they can kind of get a little wonky, get kind of long on one side or whatever.

So it's really nice to go ahead and keep those in check.

So if you wanted to kind of keep this size, we could just cut it back to about here.

Get rid of some of those wild hairs if you wanted to.

However, if you wanted to really keep this plant in check, kind of keep it back to its smaller stature, again, a lot of times we do this with crepe myrtles, you can go ahead and cut them back down to about six inches or so.

And so that's going to really allow us to get rid of some of this older upper growth and allow for some of that newer vegetation to come through and give us a fresher look in the garden.

So one thing to keep in mind as we've cleaned out our garden, you've seen me remove a lot of plant material and leaves and all of this stuff.

Now don't think that I'm just gonna throw all of this in the garbage.

This is not the case.

We do want to add that to our compost pile because it'll be beneficial to add back into our garden a little bit later.

(gentle music) Today we're joined by Ray Moranz with the Xerces Society.

And if you're not familiar with the Xerces Society, Ray do you mind telling us a little bit about it first before we get into some of the other subjects?

- I am happy to.

The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, and we're all about saving invertebrates.

Meaning insects, crayfish, spiders, things like that, the little creatures that make the world run.

And we have a staff in many, many states.

I'm our representative for Oklahoma.

And my specialty is pollinators.

But yeah, we work to save the little creatures of the planet.

- [Casey] Because they're so important, right?

I mean, they do so many things that we just take for granted a lot of times.

- Absolutely.

Obviously, pollinators are necessary to keep our flowers happy so that they can produce seeds.

So our vegetable plants can produce tomatoes and peppers.

So our fruit trees can make apples and oranges.

And then we've got dung beetles out on the ranches.

You've got a ranch.

- [Casey] Yeah, yeah.

- You need dung beetles to get rid of the dung.

- Absolutely.

They're doing that natural composting process for us.

- That's right.

- So today we're talking about pollinators and we're standing next to one of our favorite plants here at the garden.

We've got several different milkweeds but the most obvious one is this common milkweed.

Let's talk a little bit about just milkweeds in general and incorporating them into your garden.

- Sure.

I'm a huge fan of milkweeds.

I think I have 12 species at home.

Oklahoma has 30 species of milkweeds, so I'll be getting more.

This is one of the most well known species.

This is called common milkweed.

And why do we care about milkweeds?

Well, obviously for those who are into butterflies, monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants and only on milkweed plants.

If you don't have milkweeds, you're not gonna have monarch caterpillars.

But secondly, the flowers tend to be really, really good for pollinators in general.

And these flowers here have two small butterflies on them, and one of them, the one slightly farther away from my finger, is actually quite rare.

- [Casey] That one flying there, yeah.

- [Ray] Yeah.

It's a Dion Skipper.

And this is only the second or third one I've ever seen in Oklahoma.

- [Casey] Oh, wow.

- [Ray] So it's very special to have it here, but that's an example of how great of a resource milkweeds can be for pollinators.

And it's not just butterflies, bees, flies, beetles, which are all pollinators.

- Yeah, we've got all sorts of things flying all around us here.

And not to mention a showy plant, obviously with both the texture, but also the flower as well.

- Yeah.

- Now there is one other little guy on this.

Let's talk about the milkweed aphid for a minute.

- Yeah, unfortunately, there's this little yellow aphid and there's not just one, there are a few hundred.

(Casey laughing) And that's quite normal.

It's hard to avoid.

Now, you can squash 'em, and if you only had one or two milkweed plants, you might wanna do that.

Or you can wash 'em with soap and water.

I tend to leave them be, because I have a lot of milk weed plants, and I don't wanna take the time to squash 'em.

And if you leave them be, then the natural predators of the aphids will eventually kick into gear and eat 'em up.

And on this plant, we saw one of the natural predators.

Now, ladybugs, - [Casey] Mm hmm.

- Are natural predators, both as adults and as larvae, also lacewings and lacewing larvae.

And you'll actually see the populations of these natural predators build up during the course of the summer as they gobble up the aphids.

- Well, we got a little bit of food for those, (laughs) - Yeah.

- Predator insects to come on in here.

So, but that's not a problem, it's okay to have the aphids.

It's typically what you'll find.

That doesn't deter the Monarch or anything?

- It does not deter the Monarch.

- Okay.

- Especially on a big plant.

- Yeah.

- It's not a big deal.

Now, if you have a little seedling, if you're growing milkweeds from seeds and you have a seedling that's coated with them, I might go ahead and rub those aphids off.

- It's gonna hurt the health of that plant being so small.

- That's right.

If it's a little seedling.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But big plants like this'll be just fine.

- So when we talk, this is a perennial milkweed.

- Yes.

- And you mentioned there's about 30 different types, - Yeah.

- Here in Oklahoma that are native, - Yep.

- But a lot of times people buy non-native milkweeds.

Can we talk about some of the differences between buying native and non-native milkweeds?

- Absolutely.

I strongly encourage people to buy the native milkweeds.

They're not as easy to find, but they are becoming easier to find.

The native ones are all perennials.

The native ones have been here for many, many years.

- [Casey] Yeah.

- [Ray] They belong here.

And the bees and the butterflies love them.

The exotic ones, including tropical milkweed, are annuals.

They've just come here.

And it could be that they might start to invade our landscape and cause problems.

And we don't want tropical milkweed to become another nasty plant that takes over.

- Okay.

Now there's been some talk about a parasite that might be on some of those tropicals.

Is that a concern here in Oklahoma, or at this point most tropicals die back, so, where are we at with that OE parasite that might be on some of the tropical milkweeds?

- So, yeah, there's a parasite, a protostome parasite called OE.

OE is short for ophryocystis elektroscirrha.

And that's natural, a native to the US, and our milkweeds have it, - Mm hmm.

- But seemingly to a less degree than the tropical milkweed.

- Okay.

- And the fact that they go dormant, and their their foliage doesn't last quite as long.

The populations of the OE build up during the course of the summer, particularly on tropical milkweed and into the fall.

The fact that it dies in winter here is actually a good thing.

- Okay.

- That plant is most problematic in Florida, California, Texas.

- Okay, okay.

- Deep South.

- Okay.

So we don't have to worry about that too much just yet.

(Casey laughs) - I still worry a little bit about it.

- Yeah.

- But I don't plant it, in part for that reason.

- Okay, okay.

And what about when we're buying these milkweeds from nurseries?

'Cause you know, we don't know how they've been treated prior to us getting them.

Do we need to be concerned or talk to our vendors when we're buying this milkweed?

That could be, any pesticides that could be harmful?

- Yeah, that's a good idea with milkweeds and with any plants that you're planting for bees and butterflies.

Xerces Society has published some studies recently showing that some of the milkweeds that we're getting from nurseries have high enough levels of insecticide to kill the caterpillars.

- [Casey] Hmm.

- So, yes, it's a good idea to talk to your nurseries, to your vendors to find out if the plants are being treated.

- All right.

So, buy native if you can, obviously, and then also make sure you're getting it from a reputable vendor as well.

- Yep.

- So, thank you so much, Ray for sharing this information with us.

We appreciate all that you guys are doing over there to protect our insects.

- My great pleasure.

(cheerful guitar music) - On our Northeast Regional tour, we would be remiss if we didn't visit the Tallgrass Prairie.

We are just north of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and joining me today is Bob Hamilton, who is the director of the Tallgrass Prairie.

Bob, it's beautiful out here, even in the end of July.

Thank you for coming.

- Even when it's toasty, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

So tell us a little bit, for somebody who maybe has not been here before, what is this place all about?

- Well, welcome.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- I'm glad you're here, Casey, yeah.

The Tallgrass Prairie I think is one of those iconic North American landscapes.

So, unfortunately, it's one of the most highly, the most highly converted landscape that we have in North America.

So, the estimates are only about 4% of the original Tallgrass Prairie remains.

So, 96% or so has been converted.

So, primarily the crop land.

So this is the eastern part of the Great Plains of North America.

Some of the most fertile soils, good rainfall, so much of it's been converted to corn, soybeans, wheat.

- And it used to stretch up to Nebraska and further?

- It used to be, yeah, roughly (clears throat) - [Casey] East to west?

- [Bob] Yeah, roughly about 140 million acres from Texas up into southern Canada.

So kind of that whole eastern part of the Great Plains.

- [Casey] All right.

And so here you have bison roaming around.

We have some way off in the distance.

- [Bob] We do.

- [Casey] Thankfully in the distance over here.

And they're an important part of this, but you're kind of stewarding this and getting it back to how it used to be managed by the bison and the fire.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Well, the mission of the Nature Conservancy, the organization, the nonprofit group that owns and manages the preserve, is to conserve all life and basically it comes down to habitat protection.

And so in these Great Plains grasslands, what we think is extremely important in terms of providing habitat for all of the species is a heterogeneous, or a diverse, landscape.

Different species require different types of habitat.

And so the idea is to create and maintain this shifting landscape patch mosaic.

At any given moment in time, you have patches on the landscape that have been fairly recently disturbed, in terms of natural disturbance, grazing and fire, and then other patches on the landscape that have been years since that.

And so there's different species that require all those different niches.

And so it's kinda like building and maintaining a living ark.

- And when you say species, we're not talking about just plant species we're talking about animal species and insect species.

All of those come into play.

- All that good biodiversity.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Casey] You know, when I first saw prescribed burning happening, I was like "you missed a spot."

But that's (chuckles) that's okay.

You know?

Because it goes where the fuel is.

And then you... that's that patchwork effect that it creates.

- Yeah.

And then the bison, (clears throat) of course... Grazing and fire, we think, were one of the supreme influences historically on these Great Plains grasslands.

Burn it and they will come.

It's a global phenomenon with herbivores that it's all about forage quality, that lush regrowth that comes up after a fire.

"Wow.

That's just ice cream."

But we do know historically, of course, bison were the primary grazer historically in these Great Plains grasslands.

And oh my goodness, boy you burn a patch and they are on it.

It's just like, you know, candy out there out of the landscape.

- And while this is one of the, if not the largest preserve of this ecosystem, I mean, it's fairly small compared to what it used to be, but how large is your preserve here?

- We have about 40,000 acres that we manage and in addition to that, we have conservation easements and other land protection tools that we put out there on about another 11,000 acres around us.

- Okay.

So tell us a little bit about the bison.

Obviously that's an interest for a lot of people.

You know, how do you manage that?

Or they just roam around free or... - They just kinda do their thing.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, as long as they don't sneak up on ya, we're okay.

(clear throat) We try to manage bison to really manage for their wildness, for still their inherent strengths.

This is one of 12 bison herds that the Nature Conservancy owns and manages.

We put bison back into these native prairies, kind of in an attempt to put the ecological Humpty back together.

So, yeah, we put bison back here.

We introduced our starter herd in the fall of '93.

Took about 15 years to build up to the stable herd size that we have.

So now we're capped at about, oh typically we over-winter about 16 or 1700 bison and then we'll have 6 to 700 babies in the springtime.

- So what's then managing an ecosystem?

You always have a wolf, right?

Or something that kinda... - Yeah, yeah.

- So who's managing the bison?

- Yeah.

There are limits in all systems, right?

And so, yeah, we are the wolf, as I think of it.

Part of our restoration attempt...

I think a lot of our work work out here is process restoration.

Let's get the prairie functioning as it used to historically, that grazing fire interaction.

Of course, predators would've been a big part of that system.

Historically.

We have no plans to reintroduce wolves.

The wolf would've been the primary historic predator on bison.

That's just an impractical idea in a privately-owned landscape.

What's all around us is privately-owned ranches.

And so we just can't really go there.

And so we are the wolf, as I think of it.

So we try to round the entire bison herd up in the fall, usually late October, early November.

Two primary reasons.

One is health maintenance.

We wanna make sure that the bison are healthy.

We really want to make sure also that we don't have a disease situation that could impact our rancher neighbors.

As many landowners and conservation agencies and others are dealing with, invasive species are a common problem.

And we sure have our little challenges out here.

Sericea lespedeza is probably our biggest non-woody invasive plant problem.

That's a plant that was introduced on purpose over 100 years ago from Southeast Asia.

And so it's crept out into these native prairies.

What makes it so successful is it builds up tannins in its tissues.

And so it causes an imbalance in a grazing animal's stomach.

So it's kinda a chemical defense sort of thing.

- So they don't wanna eat it.

- So that's a tough one.

Yeah, yeah.

And the other big issue of course, as we're seeing globally is increase of woody species in these native grasslands.

And that's happening around the world and there's a lot of discussion on what's really driving that but we know a lot of it is from altered fire regime.

So the way with settlement how we've altered that fire pattern on the landscape has allowed things like eastern redcedar, which is a native species, to creep out into the prairie.

And the green glaciers is something that's been talked about from our friends at Oklahoma.

- [Bob] State University, some of their publications but those juniper species from Texas, Oklahoma up through the Great Plains, it's a problem now up in Nebraska even.

And so again, that's from altered fire regime.

Those eastern redcedars are fairly easily controlled by fire until they get to be big.

And then, in terms of fire management, they become a problem 'cause they're so explosive.

And then also in terms of woody stuff, one thing we are actively trying to push on now in the last few years is kind of creeping brush invasion.

So some of these clonal species that we have out here, like dogwood, roughleaf dogwood, and sumac, and some of the plum species started as an individual.

And after 20, 30 years you have a 50 foot diameter mot, or an island, and then trees start growing up through the middle of that.

And so it changes the prairie from the prairie to more of a woodland type system.

And we know species like prairie chickens, the greater prairie chicken that we have here, they are variant sensitive and intolerant of any vertical fragmentation.

Whether you're talking as eastern redcedar tree, a hackberry tree, a wind tower, anything vertical like that their hardwiring through the eons has been to avoid those.

- [Casey] Anything tall.

- [Bob] Yeah.

Especially hens when they're nesting.

When it comes to trying to engage in the conservation issues of the broader neighborhood who better to work with than the extension experts out there.

- [Casey] Well, obviously there's so much to see here.

Where can a visitor find more information about the Tallgrass Prairie?

- I'd suggest going on the website, so tnc.org and you can drill down to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and see all kinds of information.

The preserve is open to the public every day of the year.

There's about 20 miles of public roads.

Gravel.

(both chuckle) Be forewarned.

County gravel roads that run through the preserve most of that being in the bison unit.

So it's an open range situation.

You break 'em, you buy 'em, so don't bump into any bisons.

But it's quite variable today, you know, the bison are kind of off the county road but some days we have those Yellowstone-type experiences where you become the pebble in the stream and the bison flow around your vehicles and they lick your mirrors and rub on your car and...

But don't get out.

So, you know, kind of respect their wildness.

But yeah, the preserve is open every day of the year.

At headquarters, at the old Chapman-Barnard Ranch headquarters, we have a visitor center that's run by docent volunteers.

They're trained to talk to people about what the Nature Conservancy's doing, the Native American history, cattle ranching history, oil and gas, you know, kind of whatever you wanna hear about.

And we have a set of self-guided hiking trails right there near headquarters up to about three miles.

Scenic turnouts along the way on the county road.

So it's kind of a self-guided type experience.

You know, no theme parks, no water slides but I think of the prairie as this very subtle landscape.

And I think what makes it interesting is learning how it works and learning who's here in terms of the native plants and animals.

- Well, it's absolutely beautiful and thank you so much for sharing it with us, Bob.

- Thank you.

Appreciate you coming out.

(lively string music) - [Casey] Join us next week, March 18th as we're back with a brand new episode of "Oklahoma Gardening."

(lively string music) (upbeat music) (gravel crunching) 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.

Join in on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

You can find this entire show and other recent shows, as well as individual segments, on our "Oklahoma Gardening" YouTube channel.

Tune in to 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 underwriter, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry.

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

The Tulsa Garden Center at Woodward Park, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, Smart Pot, and the Tulsa Garden Club.

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