(soft string music) (soft music) - 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.

(music continues) Today on "Oklahoma Gardening", I'm headed out into the garden to harvest some flavorful asparagus spears, then we'll take a look at how the weather may be affecting our garden, as we get a recap on this spring as it compares to normal, Becky shares some chilling news about why our fruit trees may not be on schedule like normal, and finally, Dr. Justin Moss introduces me to some technology that may help with those weeds.

(upbeat music) Almost like an hombre of sunset colors.

(music continues) (music fades) It's springtime and we've got a lot of green shoots that are starting to emerge in the garden.

Now, if you're in the vegetable garden, we've all been anticipating those first shoots of asparagus that are coming up.

And as you can see, we've got ours starting to come up.

This particular asparagus, we planted last spring, so a year ago.

It's had one growing season on it already.

Typically, you plant a crown of asparagus and that first season, after you've got it planted, it will start to emerge with these different sprouts.

And you don't wanna harvest any of those sprouts because what you're trying to do is allow that plant to get established.

Now after one season, you can see we've got a few more spears that are coming up on them.

We wanna be very judicious about how many we're gonna harvest.

So you can harvest maybe a couple, maybe for about a week, but then after that, you really don't wanna harvest too much more because you're basically robbing it of its ability to photosynthesize.

So you can see we've got one that's already kind of expanded that's gonna start making that fern foliage, and this would be too far past harvesting.

Typically, when you have spears that are emerging, you wanna look for one that's about six to 10-inches in height.

And that's about the ideal time to harvest them.

You also wanna make sure that the top is still really tight.

You can see how these are tighter than these, of course, and so these are kind of the ideal time to harvest.

So once you begin to see your asparagus spears emerge out of the soil, you'll notice that earlier in the season with the cooler temperatures, they might get a little taller sooner.

And that's okay, usually they're still tender and very much edible to eat, even if they get a little beyond the 10-inches.

However, later in the weeks of harvest, you'll notice that they might stay shorter, but they're gonna get more fibrous sooner.

so you wanna be checking your harvest about every other day because they will start growing pretty rapidly once those soil temperatures start warming up.

Now there's two different ways to harvest.

You can just snap them off with your fingers or with a knife, you can go and slice down below this spear, actually down into the soil a little bit more.

Now, there's pros and cons to both methods here.

So using your fingers, obviously, it's easy.

You can just go through the garden and snap those off, and you're not interfering with any of the others around there.

If you're using a knife, the good thing about it is you can actually get down further into the woody tissue where it's not gonna lose as much moisture when you harvest it.

So again, pinching up here, you're gonna get some more of that, more succulent tissue, and so it might lose a little bit more moisture.

Problem with the knife though is you're down further where you might accidentally cut some of those other emerging spears, even some that might be below the soil surface that you don't actually see.

So those are kind of the pros and cons.

Depending on how many you're harvesting, you might choose your method.

Now again, we're gonna be kind of cautious about how many you wanna harvest because this has been just one year of growing, so probably just for a week.

Your second year of growing, you can harvest for a few more weeks.

And then finally, your third year, third full year of growing, you can go ahead and harvest for about six to eight weeks into the season.

And each year, you're gonna start to notice that more spears, bigger spears are coming up.

Because what's happening is that root system has gotten larger, it's gotten more energy to then produce more stems.

And so that's really what we wanna do is allow it to be able to grow a bigger root system in order to produce more spears for us going into the future.

Again, if we were to take all of these off constantly, it's going to drain it from its ability to photosynthesize later in the season.

Now, of course, even on a mature plant, there is a point where you wanna quit harvesting.

And so typically, when your spears - They'll start to decrease in diameter.

So when they're about 3/8 of an inch in diameter, that's about the time that we wanna start reducing our harvest.

And just go ahead and let those spears come out.

You'll see that they'll start to open up a little bit more, and you're gonna get that lovely fern foliage.

So that's a really nice, attractive quality of this perennial.

If you haven't tried fresh asparagus out of the garden, it is delicious.

So when you're harvesting, the best time to harvest is early in the morning to keep that moisture level up.

And of course, refrigerate them as soon as possible.

(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Wes Lee.

I'm an Assistant State Specialist with Oklahoma State University's cooperative extension program.

I work out of the Biosystems and Ag Engineering Department here at Stillwater, but officially, I am housed at Norman at OU, at the National Weather Center because I work for the Oklahoma Mesonet Program.

There, I'm the agriculture coordinator for that program.

I've been asked to speak with you today about the weather conditions for 2022, the spring of '22, compared to the long term average.

We'll start with rainfall.

If we look at rainfall, our weather pattern this past winter has been dominated by something called the La Nina weather pattern.

That typically means warmer than normal and drier than normal for most of Oklahoma.

And that certainly was the case in the early part of the winter, where we had exceptionally warm temperatures and very dry rainfall pattern.

Now, when we flipped over into 2022, we continued that dry weather pattern, but the temperature seemed to be a little bit cooler than normal.

For example, January, February, and March all came in at somewhere between two and four degrees below normal for the month.

Rainfall patterns for January, February, and March were all below normal.

One to two inches per month below normal for most of our Mesonet locations across the state.

The only part of the state that received normal rainfall for the winter of 2022 was a small area on I-40 to the east around Sallisaw to Fort Smith, Arkansas.

The rest of the state was somewhere running a deficit.

Of course, that deficit was much, much worse in the the western half of the state than the eastern half of the state.

Those cooler than normal temperatures that we've received since the first of the year have kept our plants a little bit behind normal for this time of year.

Things like this beautiful red bud behind me look gorgeous today, but a week or so ago, they were just looked like twigs or dormant plants.

From about Oklahoma City south, the native plants, like the oak trees, the post oaks and the black jacks, are starting to leaf out in the last couple of days.

But here in Stillwater, those native plants still lack leaves on them, but they should start coming around in the next few days with these warmer temperatures that we start to have.

Things that are planted in the soil because of those cooler than normal soil temperatures, again that are running three or four degrees below normal and have been since around the first of the year, that's delayed emergence of seeds from germinating.

Emergence of things like asparagus seems to be late.

Seeds that we planted in the garden, even cool season seeds like lettuce and spinach, has had a hard time germinating due to those cooler than normal soil temperatures.

A positive thing from those cooler temperatures are some of our weeds, like crab grass.

It's been a little bit later germinating in the year.

So maybe give you a little more time to control some of those weedy plant populations out there.

What are we in store for this year?

Well, we've not had that long of a period of time without those freezing temperatures.

So as we have already talked about, our plants are a little bit behind schedule this year compared to normal.

Therefore, if we get that freeze somewhere around April 20th or Easter, as a lot of people say, we're not going to see the amount of damage that we saw the previous year.

If you look at the Mesonet data, looking at the long term average last freeze for the state, that would mean 50% of the time we would be done with freezes for the most part of the state, somewhere around the first week of April, maybe up to April 10th.

But that leaves years when we have those late freezes.

And in fact, we have a table that shows when the last 90% of the freezes should be done with, and that still could be a little bit later in the year than this year.

And then I would look at the week long forecast.

The best thing we have to look at and see are we have any more of those freezing conditions in the forecast before I lay those sensitive plants, like peppers and tomatoes in the ground for this year.

The effect of that rainfall on soil moisture is very important on our plants, our crops.

Soil moisture has been pretty good in the eastern half of the state, running fairly close to normal for this time of year.

- But if you look at Western Oklahoma, where we've had that deficit of rainfall for a long period of time, our drought continues in that part of the state.

And we have some serious deficits in our soil moisture levels.

We are several inches behind where we ought to be this time of year.

The eastern half of the state right now is pretty good, even with the lack of rainfall that some locations have received, mainly because being winter months, the evapotranspiration rates are fairly low, and it just doesn't take as much moisture to drive the plants in the cool months as it does in the months when we start getting hot and warm.

Wind is always something that we have to deal with in the spring months of the year.

In fact, late March through April tend to be the windiest times of the year on there.

And that certainly has been the case so far for this year to date.

We've had some excessively windy days with some wind speeds above what are considered severe storm levels, which is 58 miles an hour or higher in large parts of the state this spring.

Our sustained winds, even on a day like today, are running 20 or 25 miles per hour, which is high enough to cause problems with the plants.

It dries out the moisture that we have in the soil.

It dries the leaves out.

So it requires a little more irrigation or a little more rainfall to keep those plants growing properly.

Winds tend to start dying down when we get into May and June.

And so hopefully, things will continue as normal, as they're supposed to.

If we look at the long term average, rainfall tends to go up in May and June, but winds tend to come down, and that should be a benefit for our plants going forward.

This has been a general summary of the weather conditions that we have received to date in Oklahoma, but know that Oklahoma weather can change dramatically in just a short period of time.

Those of you that have lived here a long time, know how the weather can change frequently in Oklahoma.

So revert to our mesonet.org website or our Mesonet app at both the Google Play and the Apple Store, to be able to monitor the weather conditions as it happens in the state of Oklahoma.

I'm Wes Lee.

And thank you for this opportunity to visit with you today.

(gentle music) - Hi, I've been getting a few calls already about bloom this year on fruit trees and on some of our small fruit plants.

We've got really erratic bloom.

We've got some blooms that are past even at shuck split.

And then some that are just now blooming, and some that are still thinking about pushing out into a bloom.

And this may have to do with the amount of chilling hours that we received this past winter.

And Casey and I talked a little bit about this in a February segment, but just to recap, a chilling hour is the time, is the hours that we have between 34 and 45 degrees after the trees become dormant in the fall.

And so we count up the number of hours that are in between those critical temperatures, 34 to 45 degrees.

And so normally, if we look at the average chilling hours for Oklahoma, from down in the Southeast part of the state, we may have 800 hours, maybe up to 1,000.

And as you go further north, then we have, we go maybe up to 12 or 1,400 hours on average.

And so, most of the trees that we're going to recommend that you grow are within that chilling hour range.

So for a lot of our peaches, they may range anywhere from maybe 700 to 950 or even over 1,000 hours of chilling that is needed.

But why do we need chilling hours?

That's probably a good question to answer.

Chilling is important for, if you think about these fruit buds, they started being initiated back in the fall, but they have to have enough chilling hours before they are differentiated or developed into a fruit bud in the spring.

And we need a certain number of chilling to accomplish that.

So if we have a lot of chilling, we'll have a lot of fruit buds, and this is also for pecans as well.

And so sometimes our lateral shoots need more chilling hours.

And so, on a high chill year, we may have more laterals push because they've had extra chilling.

The terminal buds, normally, if we have flowers on the end, those will need less chilling and they will push sooner.

So we'll have flowering usually at the end before we'll have the lateral buds push.

Now, if we don't have enough chilling hours.

- In many states like Southern Texas, down in the Florida, along the coastline, they don't get enough chilling hours to satisfy the needs of things like apples and pears and cherries that need a 1000 or more hours of chilling normally.

So they have to look at trees that will bloom and start the growth properly in the Spring using less chilling hours.

So we have some peaches, if they have like Texas Star or Florida or Gulf in the name of that tree, it's probably considered a low chill variety.

So they are gonna best suited for those areas with low chilling, but things that we recommend are gonna have those higher chilling requirements like 800 to a 1000 hours for Oklahoma.

Now, if like this season, there are some areas in the Southern part of the state that have had less than 300 hours of chilling.

And the thing about chilling hours is if we get above 60 degrees, we start losing those accumulated hours.

So we can end up with zero hours if we get too warm in the Winter time.

And so this is probably the least amount of chilling hours that I have seen in any season that I've been working with fruit trees.

Less than 300 is very, very low.

And so on peaches and other stone fruits they are self pollinated.

So if you end up with blossoms that you may still have fruit but if we're looking at things like apples and pears we may miss a pollination window if we don't have enough chilling hours for some of the trees.

We've got this apple that is starting to a bloom, you've got some flowers right here.

And then this one on this side is supposed to be the pollinator.

And it's just now starting to push out a few buds right now.

So it's behind quite a bit.

So if we need pollen from this tree to, for the of bees to move to this tree, we're gonna miss that window of opportunity to provide the pollen source for this tree.

And likewise, when this tree starts to bloom, this tree will probably be finished and we won't have a pollen source for this tree.

So we may end up with lots of pretty flowers but no fruit just due to the window of opportunity of that pollination not happening because our flowering is off this year due to the low chilling hours.

Now in Stillwater, we've got about the first part of March when we think of our chilling hours for like apricots and those early blooming trees like apricots and plum and almonds, maybe peaches.

We were about 500 chilling hours for the central part of the state, and since then we've accumulated a little more but a lot of my early blooming trees like apricots and almonds, they're just now blooming, which is very very late.

And so they require less chilling most of the time but they just haven't bloom like they normally would.

And most of the time, our peach trees they're gonna be blooming in the central part of the state about March 15th to the 20th.

And so this year it's been very late, so we'll see how it goes, but for right now that may be one reason that we have less fruit production this season.

(gentle music) - Today, we've got another garden gadget to showcase here on Oklahoma Gardening and joining me is Dr. Moss, who's been working with this garden gadget for the last year on and off.

So tell me, what's your garden gadget?

- We have for you today a solar powered weeding robot.

- Sounds perfect.

- That's right, So everybody loves to go out in their garden, just pull weed right?

You know, actually that can be kind of fun.

- It's therapeutic.

- It's therapeutic but we have a little solar powered robot that can do it for you.

- Okay, so this is like a kind of a take on the solar or the vacuum, and we've got the mower, so now we have a weed eater.

- Yeah you got the vacuum in your living room, you got the mower for lawn, now you got the little robot for your landscape or garden bed.

- Okay, so can it work anywhere?

- It can work anywhere, theoretically speaking right?

But you know, if you take a look at, I like to call it the little guy, and it's got little wheels on it, that'll spin around your bed.

It's got basically a weeded line at the bottom of it that'll spin around and chop the weeds down for you.

So if it's a nicely, fresh, prepared planting bed, pretty smooth, and you got some plants that you've so maybe some transplants you put in, works great.

It'll travel around in anything that tries to pop up, it'll zap it so to speak with this little weeder line, it'll also run over the weeds with its wheels and kind of do that.

- Operates about two hours a day.

And so you do have to get a solar charge but also maybe a USB charge to keep it going, check on it.

If you're gonna water or something like that, you don't wanna like put the sprinkler right on top of it, but if you have a drip system, it'll be fine.

Although, you gotta watch out for the drip system because it has to run, it has to run over that.

So make sure it's pretty smooth.

If you have a lot of chunky mulch, things like that, it kind of spins out a little bit and kind of has a little trouble.

And what it'll do is it'll still spin and try to get the weeds, but maybe it'll hit a piece of mulch or two and kind of spread those out as well.

Also, if you have a bed that you haven't touched in a while maybe it's got some tall weeds in it.

- [Interviewer] Guilty, I do.

(all laugh) - [Interviewee] Really what the niche is here, if the weeds are one inch or less, it'll knock them out, but if those weeds are already tall, then it's gonna have trouble.

In fact, it's built that way.

- [Interviewer] It's sort of a protective mechanism, right?

(indistinct) some of your more mature plants.

- [Interviewee] That's right, because you don't want it to go in and knock down your desired plants that might be tall and growing, right?

You can also protect them with a little kind of like a fence or a guard.

Or if you have a bed where it's kind of out in the wide open, you can build a little fence for it, so it knows where to stay, so it won't get too far away from you.

- All right.

So needs to be a flat surface though, not a slope or anything like that.

It might have some difficulty with traction.

- Anything bumpy, or if there's gravel, or if there's a lot of chunky mulch, not gonna do the best for you.

So a nice smooth bed is the best.

Also be aware like maybe your landscape bed is on the north side of your house, and there's a lot of shade there.

Well, this is a solar powered little robot, so you gotta have a little sun for it to keep on running for you.

- What about, I mean, so clearly it doesn't know a weed from a plant, but it's based off a height.

Are there any weeds that it maybe has difficult that are, like low growing weeds?

- Yeah, for sure.

Like if you have really prostrate growing weeds, like a prostrate spurge or something, which we have a lot in Oklahoma, it's gonna kind of go over the top of those and that plant is built, so to speak, where it can just be almost like a ground cover.

So it's not gonna go down lower and get that out for you, you'll still have to hand pull those.

- Okay, so not gonna solve all of our problems but might be a great addition to kind of keep weeds in check when you're starting a new garden.

Thank you so much for sharing this garden gadget with us.

- Thank you.

(instrumental music) - [Announcer] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(instrumental music) Next week on Oklahoma Gardening, we transition from spring bulbs to summer watermelon, and revisit another garden that is undergoing a transformation.

You won't wanna miss it.

(instrumental music) - All right, I forgot one, cheers to Spring.

(instrumental music) (robot engine revving) (instrumental 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.

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 (indistinct).

(instrumental music) 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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