- [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.

We've got a lot packed into today's Oklahoma Gardening show.

I'll introduce you to a lovely little herb we've got showing off here at the Botanic Garden at OSU.

We then head over to the Tulsa Garden Center to see their beautiful Butterfly Garden.

We'll head further north to visit a pecan farm to learn about the pecan nut case bearer.

David Hillock is back here at the Botanic Garden at OSU to show us a group of plants that are thriving in a shady location.

And as the heat cranks up, we head indoors to learn all about herbarians.

(upbeat music) - It looks like an ombre of sunset colors.

Not the flowers right?

There's an herb we wanted to talk about that is in our herb garden here called germander.

Now you probably have heard about it but maybe you haven't thought the need to add it into your garden.

But not only is it great for an herb garden but also an ornamental garden as well.

So the first one I wanna show you here this is the traditional germander.

And it's species name actually comes from the Greek word meaning ground oak.

So you can see it kind of has these shiny, sort of triangle shapes serrated leaves.

The foliage is quite attractive, but also, in the late spring, it will have these kind of spikes of lavender flowers that it produces.

Now, obviously being an herb is fragrant.

As you can smell it.

It is in the lamiaceae family or the mint family.

So it has those traditional bilateral flowers on it.

This like many herbs, a kind of drier soil.

So you wanna make sure to provide it with plenty of drainage.

But other than that, it is very heat tolerant and hardy here in Oklahoma.

Now next to it, here we have another one.

Now this is actually a different species but it is a germander, it's called creeping germander.

You can see we've got it planted on the front side of our bed so that it kind of spills over the rock.

And that's one of the nice things about it.

If you plant it in an ornamental setting or your herb garden, it will soften those hard edges of that garden space.

You can see the foliage is a little bit different.

It's got more of a, kind of a silvery grayish lamiaceae foliage but it still has the same color flowers.

Although they tend to look like a little more of a rosette, but this will just get carpeted with these pink flowers in late spring.

Both of these germanders make nice additions to any garden.

(upbeat music) Today we are here at the teaching garden at Woodward Park.

And if you haven't been here in a while there are a lot of things going on including this butterfly garden that we are standing in.

Today, joining us is Andy Fusco, who is the director of horticulture here.

Andy, thanks so much for having us out.

- Thanks for coming.

- And summer is heating up, right?

- Yeah.

It's a quick summer.

- And so we've got butterflies flying all around us and I just love this beautiful butterfly garden that you have here.

And of course, it's just getting started in the season.

So things are gonna warm up.

- Yep.

- But tell us a little bit about what went into the thought process of developing a butterfly garden.

- Well, all our gardens here at the teaching garden.

It showcase what you people can do in their own homes.

And about seven years ago, this piece of real estate outside of the gates came available.

And one of the more popular things, that's kind of coming about is, people are really interested in gardening for insects and contributing to their local ecological health.

- Absolutely.

So what are some of those things that we need to be providing to those pollinators and insects?

- So there's three big things.

You want food sources for the caterpillars.

You want nectar sources.

So the flowers for the adult butterflies and bees and then you want places that they can over winter and stay warm throughout the winter.

- And a lot of times that one in particular people don't think about.

- Yeah - So we clean out the garden, right?

- Right.

And people think about the Monarch butterfly.

Now they migrate, but most of our native insects and pollinators will hibernate over winter in our own yards.

- All right.

So what are some of the plants that fit those categories for us here?

- So one of the ones that a lot of people will know is our milkweed and that's the forging source for the caterpillar of the Monarch.

And so we have two or three different types of milkweed in this garden.

So we've got some African varieties of gomphocarpus and then some native varieties, like swamp milkweed, asclepias incarnata.

Anything that flowers really is going to be a great nectar food source for the adult bees and butterflies just like this amsonia here.

- [Andy] Even though the flowers appear small and it's still a beautiful plant to us, different size pollinators are gonna find those flowers, and really enjoy the taste of them.

- [Casey] Right.

And I think a lot of times, the flowers is the important part, but we want things eating our vegetation in here, right?

That's the forage that you're talking about with caterpillars.

- Yes, so for so long we thought like, oh, we don't want any bugs on our plants, (Casey laughs) 'cause otherwise they're gonna be ugly.

- Right.

- But the whole point, in this garden at least, is for the caterpillars and the other bugs to be eating our plants, and be a part of one big ecosystem.

- Right.

So, a lot of those finer leaf foliage plants, like fennel and dill are some, parsley I think, are some of the good ones.

- Yeah.

- Your herbs, right?

- Yeah.

Just like we find them tasty, the caterpillars do too.

So we've got bronze fennel in here.

We've got some rue.

We've got dill.

We have Italian parsley and curly leaf parsley, and those are favorites of the Swallowtail.

- [Casey] It's literally a smorgasbord for them here.

- [Andy] Yes.

Yeah.

- [Casey] And so what about some of those overwintering plants that you mentioned are important?

- [Andy] So we have some native grasses, specifically a Northwind Switchgrass, that they look pretty in the winter when, before you cut 'em back.

And actually the caterpillars, that last generation of caterpillar in the winter, will crawl down in the grasses, and spend the entire winter there.

And that gives them enough shelter from the cold winds and whatnot to make it so that they last until the next spring.

- Okay.

Well, I know a lot of pollinator gardens also usually incorporate some sort of moisture source for those.

Do you have that as well here?

- Yeah.

So we have what we've called ponding stations, so our crafting volunteers actually built these.

They're made out of a little dish, like you would put under a pot and they've got a little gravel in there, and as you're watering or when the rain, it collects some water because you know, all animals need some water.

- [Casey] Right.

- [Andy] Some of our rock features also were selected when this garden was designed so that they would hold water after the rain or after a watering.

- [Casey] Okay.

So it's not like you have to bring in a whole water garden or anything.

- [Andy] No - [Casey] Just kind of create those depressions somewhere.

- [Andy] Right.

You don't want 'em so big that then they're promoting one of our not so favorite insects, mosquitoes.

(Casey laughs) - [Casey] Right.

Absolutely.

- Yeah.

- [Casey] So, your title is, you know, the Teaching Garden here.

Tell me a little bit about some of the programs that happen and the education that might happen in this garden.

- [Andy] So, it's a little twofold, it's teaching in the sense that any member of the public can come see us Tuesday through Saturday, nine to four, and all throughout the garden, there's different areas that you can look at, and figure out.

Maybe you have a sunny spot or a shady spot, or you wanna put a vegetable garden in or an herb garden.

You can come here and get ideas for your own yard.

But it's also mostly maintained by volunteers, and these volunteers don't just show up one day and dig in the dirt.

They go through multi-week trainings.

And so this fall, we'll be relaunching our training program, and our volunteers will go through almost 70 hours of training.

And then they give us time back as a trade off for that.

- Well, it's a beautiful garden here, and I would encourage anybody that's in the Tulsa area to come over here to the Teaching Garden at Woodward Park to enjoy the beauty.

Thank you so much, Andy.

- Thanks, Casey.

(upbeat music) - Today we are outside Skiatook, Oklahoma, visiting the Selman Pecan Farm.

And joining me is Chad Selman.

Chad, it looks like you're monitoring for something.

Tell me a little bit about what you're checking with your pecans here.

- Yeah, so this is a Pecan Nut Casebearer trap.

You hang in a tree - Mm-hmm - And has a little pheromone trap inside of it.

- Okay.

- And then it brings the male moths to this trap and it's got a little stickiness on the bottom of it.

And so it catches the moths, and I come and look starting in 1st of May, I'll hang it out onto the tree.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Chad] And I'll check it every day.

And then until I find two days in a row, or I catch moths, and then after those two days, I'll go and look for the eggs.

- [Casey] So how do you know you're catching the Pecan Nut Casebearer moth, not other moths?

- [Chad] Yeah, So there are other moths that you are going to catch - [Casey] Uh huh - But, it will be primarily the Pecan Nut Casebearer.

- [Casey] Okay.

But they're a kind of a real small moth, maybe about a quarter inch at most in length.

Kind of have a little scale on the back of their, right behind their head, a little gray.

- [Casey] You know what you're looking for (laughs) - [Chad] I do know what I'm looking for, thankfully.

And so we we'll come out and we'll check em.

And generally when we really start catching 'em, you might catch 20 or 30 of 'em in a day.

- Okay - And then you might only catch one or two.

- Okay.

- So, but it doesn't matter on a 20 or 30.

It matters on two days in a row.

And so then we're gonna go look for eggs, which are on the end of a cluster.

Gonna find just a little white egg, and you need to check for those.

And once you do, then you can decide whether you wanna spray or not, if you find enough that warrants it.

- Okay, so tell me a little bit about what that egg then does to the nutlet and the damage that it can cause for you as a farmer with your pecan orchard.

- Yeah.

So the egg, so once it hatches outta the egg it's gonna go and eat its way inside one of the little bitty nutlets, which are going to, are very small right now, they're smaller than your pinky.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Chad] So then it's gonna live in that nutlet for a while until it eats it out.

And then it's gonna move into another one.

- [Casey] And it's a little caterpillar larva, right?

- [Chad] It's a little caterpillar looking, - [Casey] Okay.

a larva kind of olive green in color.

(Casey laughs) And most people won't, you won't even notice it.

So once we do find those, we spray 'em, and also when you see damage happening, there'll be it's called frass.

And kind of best way to explain it is bug poop, is what it is.

- [Casey] Right, right.

(chuckles) - But it'll also look like kind of maybe a spider might be living in the middle of the nut cluster.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Chad] Kinda almost like webbing-looking stuff in there.

- [Casey] Okay.

And that's from the kernel of a Nut Casebearer.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Chad] And it'll actually eat the entire cluster.

It'll terminate all those nuts in that cluster.

- [Casey] Okay.

So I know when we get our pecans.

and there's that little black - Whole in the pecan shell.

That's not what we're talking about, right?

- No.

That's correct.

- Okay.

- Yeah, that, that comes later in the year.

Which is a pecan weevil.

Which is 90% of what everybody sees.

- Okay.

So this actually just causes the nut to abort?

- Abort, that's correct.

- It reduces your production then?

- That's correct.

Yes, it does.

So, so we go ahead and spray for these and then not every year you need to spray for 'em because weather events can mess up their timing of egg laying and such.

And so that's why we try to scout and find the eggs.

- Okay.

- Now, when we do spray for 'em we use what's called, which typically everybody uses, is called Intrepid.

- Okay.

- Or a form of Intrepid.

And it kills mainly kind of moth-type or caterpillars type insects, type bugs.

A lot of, which a lot of 'em are leaf eaters.

- Right.

- And a lot of 'em that everybody sees, one of the insects is kind of a byproduct of spraying for case-bearer are the webworms which everybody notices in the fall.

- [Woman] Yeah and they like pecans, right?

- Yeah, they like pecans.

Which webworms, majority of the time, maybe 90% of the time are not doing real damage to the tree or the crop.

Because it's generally not that severe.

Now it can be severe in very few cases, but most of the time it's just kind of ugly, a nuisance.

You don't like to see it.

It looks like it's doing damage but it's really not that bad.

- Okay.

So what you're spraying for is very selective to just some of those pesky caterpillars?

It's not affecting the beetles or anything.

- That's correct.

- Okay.

- That's correct.

And another one right now that everybody's been seeing in the last year or two, are these bag worms.

- [Woman] Oh yeah.

- Which are in a little cocoon and they're, a lot of 'em even come started last year, a lot of 'em are hanging down from the trees and the, with a web and stuff like that.

So this product will also kill those as well.

So it's kind of another byproduct of spraying for these case-bearers.

- [Woman] Okay, so how often and what is that process of spraying and treating for these?

- Yeah, so we, we spray for 'em once a year and that should take care of, there's several cycles of case-bearers throughout the year, two to three.

But spraying for this first one will, should suppress the other cycles enough where we shouldn't have to.

And so we're kind of finishing up our spraying right now and this will, so this'll keep the pecan nut case-bearer and help with the webworms and the bag worms as well.

- All right, Chad.

Well, thanks.

And here's to another great production here.

- Yes absolutely.

- Thanks.

(soft music) - Today I wanna show you the plant that we chose for our perennial, for the Oklahoma Improvement Program for 2022, this is a great plant.

The genus is heuchera, or coral bells.

There's actually several species.

They are native to north America, but this is a fun plant.

It's very colorful.

Over the last decade or two the breeders have done a lot of work with this plant and really, really improved it in that there's all kinds of different cultivars and varieties out there.

This one here you can see has nice, the under the underside of the leaf is a bright purple and the upper side of the leaf is a dark green with kind of a silvery cast between the veins.

And then it also has this light, airy flowering stem with little tiny pinkish bell shaped flowers.

But they come in a wide variety of colors.

There's some really dark purple colors, some orange-ish colored varieties, and some really bright ones like a chartreuse or lime colored.

They do very well in shady conditions and semi shady conditions.

Some of them will tolerate full sun if you provide adequate moisture to them.

Now the darker colored varieties, they tend to tolerate more sunlight than the lighter ones do.

The chartreuse and lime colored ones.

You know, sometimes you can put them out in full sun but make sure you have adequate water available to 'em.

The lighter colored ones have a tendency to burn up in the sun.

So they're best provided in the shade because of that light, bright green color.

They really stand out nicely in the shade as well.

Now, the flower colors, they come in a few, a range of colors as well.

They can be from red to pink to white.

You can see that this is kind of the habit of heucheras or coral bells.

They grow in a clump habit.

They don't spread a lot.

So, you know, you can create a really nice ground cover by placing 'em fairly close together.

Now some of the plants are more drought tolerant than others, again, depending on the parentage of the hybrids that are, that are out there they do have a very shallow fibrous root system.

So you do want to be sure to provide moisture especially during the driest times of the year when you wanna make sure that the crown isn't too exposed during the winter months it's a good idea to mulch around them during the winter because otherwise if they're exposed, the frost and freeze heaving of the soil will push them right out of the ground and expose the crown of the plant which can cause some winter damage.

So if you're looking for a great perennial, long lasting, some of them can be, can be evergreen.

And some of 'em are deciduous depending on the year, the severity of our winters as well as the cultivar.

- But they're great long-lasting perennials that provide all kinds of color for you.

(gentle music) - Today, we are joined by Dr. Mark Fishbein who is the department head for plant biology, ecology, and evolution.

He is also the director of the OSU Herbarium, which is what brings us here today.

So thank you for allowing us to be in your lab.

- Well thanks, Kasey.

It's really great to have an opportunity to talk about herbaria.

- Yeah, so I think a lot of times people may know the general concept of a herbarium, but can you explain to us exactly what a herbarium is?

- Well, sure.

A herbarium is a natural history collection.

So here we preserve plants.

And we preserve them in this form, a dry, flat specimen that's mounted on a piece of paper with information about when and where it was collected.

- [Kasey] So there's a lot to this.

And you have a lot in your collection.

Can you give us a general idea of how many collections you have?

- [Dr. Fishbein] Yeah, the OSU Herbarium has about 160,000 specimens.

- [Kasey] Wow.

- [Dr. Fishbein] They were collected in all places around the world.

But naturally, we have a strong representation of specimens collected from Oklahoma.

- Now, and that that's not just you going out collecting.

So how did these collections come about?

- Yeah, various ways.

They can be sent to the herbarium for documentation of projects from, connected by researchers around the world.

There's many collections made by students, and courses, and donations from hobbyists that like to collect plants.

- [Kasey] And you're not the first director.

So previous directors have also had kind of influence on this as well.

Are there any collections in particular that they might have added to?

- [Dr. Fishbein] Yes, so the, my predecessor, Ron Turrell, collected many grass specimens.

His predecessor, UT Waterfall, was a specialist in the ground cherries, the genus Fistulas.

And so we have probably the best collection of that genus in the world.

- And what's your contribution to (inaudible).- - And so the plants I love are the milk weeds, the genus Asclepias.

And we also have a fairly remarkable collection of that genus here.

- Excellent, so with your collection of Asclepias and some other collections that you have, is OSU kind of known for those?

I mean, how does that influence research worldwide?

- Yeah, so for some of the taxonomic groups that we're known for, researchers will wanna study our specimens when they're doing ecological work or taxonomic work in particular.

But more broadly, our great representation of the Great Plains in Oklahoma means that people interested in climate change or plant distributions in North America would be interested in studying our collections as well.

- And I know that you have more than one type of plant.

You might have one Asclepias or you might have multiple of one type of Asclepias.

What's the point of having multiple preserved plants of more than one species?

- That's a great question.

We wouldn't have 160,000 specimens if we didn't have many examples of certain species.

And it's really important to have that to document the variation within a species as species grow in different regions or at different years that are dry years or wet years.

They would appear very different.

Not just their size, but many other aspects.

It's important to have collections all through the life history of the plant, showing what they look like as seedlings, as plants before they're flowering, with flowers, with fruits.

And also we document the influence of herbivores and other organisms that interact with the plants as well.

- So yeah, I mean, plants can be regionally slightly different, even though they're the same species.

And they can look completely different from a juvenile to an adult form.

So it's- - That's what I was trying to say to you.

- That's capturing that.

- Exactly right.

(laughs) - So what all information can we find on a card?

I mean, let's look at this card here.

So when you're collecting something, what typically is this general information include for a person?

- So we try to, this was collected by a student.

And we try to encourage the students to be really good data collectors.

So it tells us this was collected at Sanborn Lake.

We know who collected it, what the date was.

We know GPS coordinates.

We know something about the vegetation it was growing in, the soils, we know what other plants were growing with it.

These would be the things that ideally you would want to include when you are making a specimen.

- And these are collected in the wild, is that correct?

- Yes.

- You don't take the last of the plant, right, but you do collect them in wild.

- They're collected in the wild.

We also document cultivated plants as well.

That can be important because you never know when a species that's well behaved in cultivation becomes our next invasive species.

And so having that information can be quite useful.

- So when somebody wants to borrow one of these, do they have to actually physically come to their herbarium or are they like inner library loans that you can share 'em that way?

- Yes, both of those.

So we take, we have visitors that come study our specimens.

And we box up specimens and ship them.

- But over the last 20 years or so, we have been involved, all Herbarium have been involved in collecting information about collections, putting them in online databases, so that for some types of research you don't actually need to physically see the specimen.

And just knowing that it exists and knowing information about the collection can be quite valuable.

And so that saves a lot of air travel and a lot of wear and tear on the specimens.

- [Casey] And who all's accessing this information?

Is it just plant people, or there are others that are interested in this, as well?

- [Male Scientist] All kinds of researchers.

I mean, people interested in climate change, people interested in herbivory, or invasive species might be accessing this information.

And really the general public has a great interest in natural history collections for their own sake, but also they're curious about what's growing in their backyard and this can be a resource for helping them learn about that kind of stuff.

- So, while botanical gardens are collecting the live plants you guys are preserving what has been and just like botanical gardens, there's multiple Herbariums around the state, as well.

Is that correct?

- That's correct.

There are at least 10 herbarium collections in Oklahoma, mostly associated with universities and colleges.

- All right.

- Yeah.

- Well, thank you for sharing about OSU's Herbarium.

- My pleasure.

Great to be here.

(energetic folk music) - [Casey] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(energetic folk music) Next week, we've got another great show full of plants and if the hot weather is driving you back inside, we will introduce you to a project that might just be of interest to you.

Join us right here, on Oklahoma Gardening.

- [Girl] This is dill, got it.

All right.

Right.

What's the big deal, better, (woman stuttering) - [Woman] Should I tell you one of your dad jokes that you've got?

- [Girl] I probably won't laugh.

They're not funny.

- [Casey] 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 into our OK Gardening Classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous hosts.

Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our studio gardens, and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful Stillwater gem.

We would like to thank our generous 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.