(gentle music) - [Announcer] "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.

- Welcome back to "Oklahoma Gardening.

We first start with a peek into the greenhouses full of annuals that will soon be filling the Botanic garden at OSU.

I'll also share with you a few reminders to consider checking before turning on your home irrigation system.

I'll then head into the garden to begin cleaning it up, making room for all those annuals that will soon be planted.

Finally, Jessica Riggin is here to give us a healthy spin on some tasty nachos.

(gentle music) It's almost like an ombre of sunset colors.

(gentle music) Not the flowers, right?

(gentle music) (laughing) (gentle music) One day here in Oklahoma it feels like spring, and then the next it is winter again.

And while it's not time quite yet to go out and plant those traditional bedding annuals, I thought it would be a a good opportunity to head inside the greenhouses here at the Botanic garden to see some of the annuals that we've been growing that will soon be filling the gardens here.

So let's go inside and take a look.

(upbeat music) Now, this is a real behind the scenes look at our greenhouses.

And so you're some of the dirty stuff too, obviously.

But we don't have a traditional headhouse that you might find at some greenhouses.

Instead, we kind of have this little space that we use as our propagation area.

No better way to reuse an old cast iron bathtub than to fill it with potting soil.

So this is where we get a lot of our plants planted up over the winter months.

And as you can see, we've got a lot of plants growing already.

Keeping with that bath theme, however, this is no regular shower.

In fact, we use these shower curtains to kind of protect us as we're walking by from the mist bench here.

So you can see we've got a lot of stuff growing on our mist bench.

A lot of our vegetable transplants and some there annual cuttings that we've taken to utilize here in the gardens.

So as we head through the greenhouse here, I wanna kind of show you some of the plants that are really good for our gardens and Oklahoma area in general.

We've got of course, a lot of salvias and coleus that I like and do well.

Here behind us we have a lot of a oregano, germander, and scented geraniums that will soon be going out into our herb garden.

We also have a lot of verbenas and there's one verbena I wanna show you.

This is called cake pop.

Now this is a verbena rigida that is a little bit more coarse in its foliage than some of the other verbenas and you can see how it's got this nice round ball of pink flowers atop it.

So I'm really excited about seeing this out in the garden.

And we've got some ageratums and some golondrina.

Also the lions ear is a nice orange color.

If you're wanting to add some orange into your garden, of course.

And then here we've got a South African Phlox that you can see.

Now this is actually a bacopa that's a little more drought tolerant and heat tolerant.

So we'll often use that white bacopa.

This is one that will withstand it.

I just love those yellow eyes in that flower there.

Of course we gotta have pollinator plants, right?

So we've got plenty of lantana, portulaca, and a lot of scaevola, Mexican heather growing as well.

And because greenhouse real estate is expensive, we have these nice rolling benches that allow us to utilize more surface area.

I wanna highlight some euphorbias here that we have.

Now the diamond frost euphorbia, you may be familiar with it, it was an Oklahoma proven a few years ago.

And you can see it's got kind of light, airy flowers to it.

This is in the euphorbia family so you're gonna see that white latex oozing from it when you break the foliage or the stems.

Down here in front you'll notice that this euphorbia looks a little different.

This is actually called diamond snow.

So if you think about snow and frost, frost is usually a little lighter so it's a little less heavy with the foliage and the flowers as the diamond snow is.

Now heading on we've got some others that I wanna showcase.

So obviously petunias.

Petunias are great for constant color.

Again, here's some more coleus.

This is the tattoo series periwinkles.

So we've got a papaya and then we also have the raspberry, which has more of a darker eye to it there.

Sweet potato vines.

Again, the nice thing about coleus and sweet potato vines, is it's gonna continue to give you color throughout the season, regardless of whether they're blooming or not.

Also, here's another dichondra and it will give you that silver foliage as well.

- Finally another plant I wanna highlight, 'cause a lot of times people ask about this one when we're out in the gardens.

And so these are the morning glory trees.

It comes in a pink and a white, and then this is another morning glory; this is the wooly morning glory vine.

Now it will get a purple kinda morning glory flower to it late, late in the season, but really we grow it more for this foliage.

These leaves will get three times the size of what this is right now.

And they'll get up to be about 12 to 18 inches long, and what's really nice is, the underneath will be more silvery as it's dancing in the wind.

So it's a nice foliage.

It's very velvety when you touch it.

So this is just a highlight of what we have in this greenhouse.

We do have another greenhouse that I also wanna take you and take a look at.

(gentle music) Now here we are in our second greenhouse.

And this is actually a newer greenhouse, only a couple of years old.

So we don't have the rolling benches in here, which is actually nice because it allows us to have some large open space to keep some of our tropicals, that if you've come to the gardens you will see them around scattered throughout.

So our elephant ear, that's normally up by the building, the main patio area.

Also our citrus trees here.

I mean they're huge, right?

But we have to bring them in to protect 'em.

These typically are used to flank our vegetable garden.

So you'll find those out there, and what's nice is that they're blooming right now, and so the fragrance just really fills the space.

We have a lot of succulent also growing here on the ground as you can see.

Now one of the questions that we get a lot when people come to the gardens is...

When they're visiting the patio garden specifically, if all of these succulents are hardy or not.

Well there are a few that are hardy, but we do have a lot that we have to bring in, and thanks to the ambassadors a lot of them come into the gardens and help us take those out of that space and protect 'em over winter time.

So we got a lot of those.

We also have a lot of succulent that we're also propagating and growing out for our upcoming Herb and Succulent Festival.

Now if you see here on the ground, we have a lot of herbs that just came in and we're so excited about these.

We just got them potted up yesterday.

Again, the garden ambassadors who are huge help to us to keep everything going throughout our winter and also our growing season.

So we've got these ready to go.

They're gonna continue growing over the next few weeks, and they will be available to anyone who wants to come and join us for our Herb and Succulent Festival on April 30th.

So we're gonna have a lot of vendors that day, it's gonna be a fun day to be out here at the gardens.

Please join us and fear not, spring will soon be here.

(orchestral music) (woman talking indistinctly) (orchestral music) As we head into spring, we wanna start also thinking about bringing our irrigation system back online.

Now a lot of times we just shut it down in the winter time and that's fine, but before it becomes a necessity this summer, we wanna make sure that we've got it up and running.

So the one thing you wanna do before you start anything is to kind of visually inspect any heads that you might have had and make sure that they don't seem to be too much of a problem, or damaged, or anything like that before we actually turn them on.

Especially check the ones that might be up near the driveway, where they might have accidentally gotten hit by a car as it pulled in or backed up.

The other thing you wanna do is go ahead and check valve boxes, just to make sure that you don't see visibly any damage to them.

Now be careful when you're opening these up because a lot of times, some winter animals might have found some refuge in there during those colder temperatures.

So a lot of times you'll find toads, you might find a snake, or even some black widow spiders in there, or even some rodents that might have made a nest.

So if you find any debris in there, go ahead and clean that out.

Just be careful and make sure you wear gloves as you're doing that.

Now after you've kind of visually inspected everything, it's time to go ahead and take a look at your controller.

Now just like we changed our clocks in our home recently, you also wanna make sure that the time on your controller is accurate, so that you know that your irrigation is going off when it's supposed to be going off.

After you've checked your time, you also wanna make sure that again, your display looks like it's working accurately and all the wires are okay and haven't been chewed or anything like that, or damaged in any way.

The other thing is, if you have a wireless controller, now's a good time to go ahead and change those batteries.

Just kinda like your smoke detector that you change at daylight saving time.

Go ahead and change those batteries in your wireless controllers, so that you're ready to go through into that summer season.

Once you've done that, it's time to go ahead and start turning on our system.

A lot of times that might start by turning on the main line, if you've turned that off you're during those winter months - So usually that's a ball valve that you're gonna slowly turn on so that it doesn't pressurize the system and cause any jarring of those pipes.

So, slowly turn that on.

The other thing you wanna be mindful of is, if you have opened any drain valves, or any circle hoses, or anything like that, while that will help flush that out initially, you do wanna make sure that you close those eventually, so that you're not just losing your water that way.

So once we've got water in our system, we will wanna go ahead and turn our zones on.

So one of the best ways to do this is go back to the controller and actually do a cycle test.

So, where you can go and if your controller doesn't have that, a lotta times you can just put a program in there, where you run through each zone for about three minutes.

That usually is enough time to allow you to visually inspect each one of those zones.

Again, making sure that they're not bubbling from down at the base of that head, where it might be cracked.

Also, you wanna make sure that they are covering properly.

So, if you have rotors, or sprays, that maybe the spray is going off onto the sidewalk, you wanna rotate those and adjust those.

Now, keep in mind, landscapes, hopefully, are growing.

That's the point.

And as landscapes grow, sometimes those plants will interfere with the coverage of your sprays, and different heads that you have.

So, now is a good time, also, to make sure that you are getting good coverage, that that shrub hasn't grown too much, and isn't interfering with a range, or the reach, of that water.

If that's the case, it might be time to go ahead and adjust your actual irrigation system, and look at replacing some of those for a more appropriate spray, or delivery method of that water.

If you wanna do that, or if you have any major damage, now's a good time to go ahead and call an irrigation company to come in and fix that.

Once you've got all of that repaired, and you're ready, or, if you don't have any repairs to make, if you're ready to go ahead and start your irrigation, it's important to remember to go ahead and set that schedule.

The best time to water is early in the morning.

And the reason why is because it allows the plants and the landscape to go into this day well hydrated.

It also allows that water that might be on the foliage, and around that plant, to go ahead and dry off during the day, so it reduces any fungus or pathogens that might grow on those plants.

And when you're doing that, you wanna make sure that you're watering your plants deeply, and less frequently.

This will encourage those roots on your plants to establish deeper down into the ground, making them more resilient as we go into those hot, drier months.

Now, as we go into those hot, drier months, it also means you're going to have to look at your irrigation schedule regularly, to see if it's still appropriate, as those temperatures heat up.

Now, while you've inspected your irrigation system now, early in the spring, it is important to visually inspect it about once a month.

Often our irrigation schedule is set to come on early in the morning, so we might not even ever see it.

So, once a month, make sure to regularly go through that test cycle, so that you can check and make sure none of your heads have been damaged.

Doing all of this now will save you a headache later.

(tranquil 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 a perennial.

If your garden is like ours, we have a few annuals that we missed the 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 'em back.

(tranquil 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 day lilies, 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, day lilies, irises, things like that.

Because what happens is they are perennial, 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.

(country 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 a shrub, like crape 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 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 basically, on plants such as this and also like the popular crape myrtle, you can go ahead and prune these back.

Now, if you do not prune it back, it's going to resprout 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 crape 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.

(upbeat music) - This sweet potato nachos recipe is so quick and easy to put together, and it's really healthy for you.

It's got sweet potatoes, bell peppers, onions, and you could put black beans on it, that's an optional topping.

The sweet potatoes and the bell peppers and the onions all are great sources of vitamin A and fiber.

And the black beans are also a great source of fiber.

So it's full of vitamins and minerals and fiber, which Americans don't really get enough of.

- So to start, what I'm gonna do is dice up my bell pepper and set it aside.

And then I'll dice up my green onions, or slice my green onions, rather.

And then I'll set them aside.

And I'll dice my red onion.

Once all my vegetables have been cut up, I will do my sweet potatoes.

So the question is, do you leave the skin on or take it off?

And the answer to that question is, it's up to you.

With potatoes, there are a lot of good nutrients just under the skin of the potato.

A lot of people don't like potato skins so if you don't like it, don't want it, just take it off.

It's no big deal.

But, it is pretty healthy for you.

Just be sure that you wash the potato really, really well with some running cold water to get all of the dirt off, anything that might be on the outside of the potato.

You wanna make sure that you've cleaned it off.

And that actually goes for your onions and your peppers too.

So when I start to slice my potato, I'm gonna slice across like this so that I end up with little rounds.

Make sure that your potato slices are uniform in thickness.

So you could do 1/4 inch thick to 1/2 inch thick, it doesn't really matter, just as long as they're all the same, because you want your potato rounds to all cook in the same amount of time.

Now, this potato was grown at The Botanic Gardens and this is a sweet potato that came from the supermarket.

And as you can see, there's a really big difference.

So if you've grown sweet potatoes at home, it's not gonna be as uniform in size, that's okay.

Just do the best you can.

We're not serving these at a high-end restaurant, we're eating 'em at home.

So just do the best you can for getting them even as possible.

Once they're sliced up, I will spread them out on my sheet pan in one single layer.

And then I'll brush some olive oil on there, sprinkle a little salt and pepper blend.

I'm gonna pop 'em in a 400 degree oven, let 'em roast for 15 minutes.

And I'll take 'em out, flip each of the little rounds, let 'em roast for another 15 minutes.

And then I'll take it out and top it with all of my toppings.

You could add beans here.

Beans are an excellent source of fiber and they're low in fat and they're just another vegetable you could add.

Black beans, chili beans, or cannellini beans, whatever your family likes.

You could also add some diced tomatoes if you wanted, that would be really great.

Pop 'em back in the oven for another five minutes or so, until the vegetables are warm and the cheese is melted.

All right, so there it is, quick and easy sweet potato nachos.

I hope you'll try this and I hope you enjoy.

(upbeat bluegrass music) - [Narrator] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(upbeat bluegrass music) (upbeat bluegrass music) (upbeat bluegrass music) Next week on "Oklahoma Gardening", before we can plant our transplants and start the mower, we'll share a few more items that should be on everyone's spring gardening agenda.

(upbeat bluegrass music) - 22.

Take.

What are we on, Jessica?

- Five.

- One.

(clapper bangs) - Okay, this is a little bit newer of a green.

- [Woman] Perfect.

(soft guitar music) - [Narrator] 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 garden.

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.

(soft upbeat music fades)