(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 & Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

Dedicated to improving the quality of life of the citizens of Oklahoma through research-based information.

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

- [Casey Hentges] Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

First, I want to highlight another great perennial.

Becky Carroll shares with us the importance of native pecans.

We travel to Greenleaf's Hidden Lake nursery to see how they graft peach trees.

And then David Hillock introduces the 2022 Oklahoma Proven tree of the year.

Finally, we head back to OSU's herbarium, with Mark Fishbein to learn about a herbarium project that you could get involved with.

(gentle guitar music) Almost like an ombre of sunset colors.

It's not the flowers, right?

- No, no.

(plant thumping) (laughing) - I've got another great drought tolerant plant I wanna share with you.

This is called Gray Santalina.

We have it growing here in our rock garden because it does like it good rocky and good drainage soil.

So you can see here, it's got that gray foliage, and usually that's kind of a telltale sign of a plant that is drought tolerant.

And so it can handle our Oklahoma heat and sometimes those drier soil conditions that we might experience as we head into those summer months.

Now the foliage itself actually kind of reminds me of an Arizona Cypress.

It's kind of got that grayish green color that it brings to the garden landscape.

And you can see up close it has kind of a fuzzy texture to it.

What's unique about this is it actually, the species comes from the Greek word, meaning dwarf Cypress.

So it doesn't surprise me that it sort of reminds me of the Arizona Cyprus.

And you can see how it kind of spreads, it'll create these kind of rolling mounds of this sort of like a cloud like effect in your landscape.

Now in late spring, it also will put up these flower buds.

Now these flower buds, while it is in the Asteraceae family and they look like kind of like the little buds or the eyes of a daisy.

That's because they are sort of that eye of the daisy or the eye of the mum because they lack the ray florets that you often see around the mum or the daisy.

Instead, they just have these button-like flowers that sort of polka dot the landscape.

But that contrast between the bright yellow and the gray foliage makes a nice addition to any landscape.

Now if you're not really interested in the gray color in your landscape, there also is a green Santalina to check out.

Both of these are hardy from zone six to 10, and again a great edition in any Oklahoma garden.

(gentle music) - Most people associate the three sister crops like bean, corn, and squash, with the native American tribes here in the United States.

But there's actually a crop that's grown in Oklahoma that may have even a longer history with the indigenous people of the United States.

And that's pecans.

Pecans are found in the wild, native pecans are found from Wisconsin down through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, a little bit of Arkansas, but mainly Oklahoma and Texas.

And those pecans are growing wild.

They're native to the area.

They're grown in riparian type of soils, very deep and rich river bottoms.

And they are spread along those creeks and tributaries.

And so that's where you find a lot of our native pecan trees and native pecan groves in the state of Oklahoma.

And so all the trees that are grown in other states like Georgia, or New Mexico, Arizona, and California, those have all been planted.

So we have something special here in the state that we need to recognize and know a little bit more about the benefits of native pecans.

So I have some examples of some native pecans that were selected from different parts of the state.

Some of them are too small to really be useful for production.

But then you can see that they are quite different in size and shape.

Each native pecan tree is gonna be genetically different from the others.

And so that's why we see a lot of differences in quality as well.

And so for native pecan growers, whenever they are managing their orchards, they need to worry about things like thinning the trees to get enough sunlight into the trees.

And then look at fertilization which can be done by u- - Clovers or conventional fertilizers, but also managing for pests like pecan nut casebearer or pecan weevil.

But most of the time, if one of their native trees may have issues with scab or other problems, that might be one that they would think about removing in their thinning process, rather than trying to spray consistently to keep the the disease at bay.

There, a lot of of different native pecans may have very thin shells.

Most people think of a native as being very hard shell, very thick and very little meat.

But in, but really, there's a lot of them that have thinner shells.

People talk about a paper-shell pecan, and a paper-shell just is kind of a descriptive word for how thick the shell is.

It doesn't mean that it's been grafted or it's an improved variety, it just means that the shell is thinner.

And a lot of people use it interchangeably for improved varieties.

But if we look at some of the different types of pecans that we use in some of our orchards in Oklahoma and other parts of the country, some of these were selected as natives.

So they were grown like the Mount.

It is a pecan that was in a native grove in around Beggs, Oklahoma on the Mount Ranch.

And so, it was a consistent producer, had good quality, and so the Mount family selected that pecan, started taking graft wood, sharing it with others, and so now we have that improved variety called Mount.

And so some of the others that are listed on here, like Kanza, Lakota, Pawnee, Choctaw, with the native American names, those were all released from the USDA.

And so they were went through a breeding process to develop those cultivars.

But like a Maramec pecan, it was actually a seedling that was found in Maramec, Oklahoma.

And it was growing in, just next to a house there in Maramec.

It was probably a Mahan seedling, but we know that when you plant a nut, the tree that's produced from that nut is not gonna produce identical pecans to the original tree.

So, you can see there's a lot of different choices in size, and shape, and how they, even how they taste.

Some of these taste much better than others.

I personally like the smaller pecans.

They usually have higher oil content.

Like our natives, they have much higher oil content.

And right now there's, they're doing some research to look at the health benefits of native pecans versus improved varieties.

And so, they're showing that there are definite increases in some of the oils, and some of those properties of the oils have a health benefit.

So that's something to look forward to hearing more research on, on some of those research projects that are going on at OSU and other areas across the country.

There are a lot of differences in how they're managed.

A native tree, like I said, there's a few inputs that native growers will have to do in their groves.

But for an improved producer, an improved variety producer, they're gonna have to be more intensive management.

So, some of the varieties like Pawnee or Choctaw, some of the larger nuts, will require irrigation.

And so, if you don't have enough water to produce these pecans and fill them out properly, then growers need to be thinking about growing something smaller, like a Kanza.

And so, availability of water is a big issue.

And then also, a Pawnee versus Kanza, the Pawnee is gonna have much more fungicide applications needed versus a Kanza.

And then a Kanza may also even fit into a native grove where sometimes they can graft a Kanza or some of these other smaller nuts into a native grove and they will be easily fit into that production system, but boost the kernel percentage a little bit on those overall production of those nuts.

If you look at what I said about kernel percentage, that means the amount of kernel to shell or packing material.

So, something that's got a very thin shell, something like a Peruque has a very thin shell, it may be like 60% nut meat, or 60% kernel is what we call it, whereas some of the natives like these very small ones, or some that have very thick shells, may have a 30 or a 35% kernel.

So, you have less nut meat per pound versus one of these with a thin shell.

I'm excited about native pecans in Oklahoma.

And I hope you have the opportunity to try a native pecan and see the differences between it and an improved variety.

Check with your local pecan grower in your area, ask them if they have some.

Or you can forge some for yourself in a park, or in, near a creek bank, or somewhere in the fall.

This isn't the best time to be looking for pecans, but later in the fall when they start to drop is ideal time to harvest.

(upbeat music) - Today, we are just outside of Fort Gibson at Greenleaf's Hidden Lake Nursery.

And joining me today is Mark Andrews.

- Mark, A lot of people are eating those delicious peaches this time of year, but you're working on the future crop of peaches.

Right?

- Right.

So these crops that we're working on are for next year and future years beyond that.

- Okay, so we've got tiny little peach trees growing here, but these aren't what's gonna be the finished product.

Right?

- No, this is just, these are young peach seedlings that are here in the field.

And what we're gonna do is use these to bud the improved varieties that everybody's looking for at the grocery store.

So if they're looking for a Hale-Haven peach, or a Redhaven peach, whatever variety it is, that's what we bud onto these, so that we know we've got a good, consistent crop, and that it's true to the name of the peach.

- Okay, so when you say bud, what we're talking about is grafting a improved cultivar on top of a hardy root stock.

Right?

- Correct.

- So these are the root stocks.

- This is the root stock right here, right now, yeah.

- Okay, so what is the budding process or the grafting process that we're doing?

- So what we do is we collect wood from known trees.

- Okay.

- So we go to orchards where we already know what the tree is, and we collect wood from that particular variety.

And then what we do is we take small, little buds and we go ahead and graft those onto these seedlings.

- [Jamie] Okay.

- And then after the bud goes ahead and heals onto that tree and everything, then we break the seedling tree off and put all the energy into that bud and start a whole new tree that is true to the name of the variety.

- [Jamie] So how long does that process take to actually get that new bud to heal on there and start growing?

- [Mark] With peaches, they're fairly rapidly growing plants.

So what we'll be doing is we'll be grafting them right now at this time of year in early summer, and in about four to five weeks is when we'll come back and we'll start bending these tops of these trees over.

Because by then, they'll be healed onto there.

And we wanna start pushing the growth into that bud and start the new tree.

- [Jamie] Okay, why do you bend them over instead of just cutting the tops off?

- It seems to work better to bend it over.

There's still a little bit of energy that comes from the leaves and everything like that to feed the plant and everything.

But by breaking it over, you're disrupting the growing tissue, the the xylem that transmits the nutrients in water.

So we're stopping that from going up into the rest of it.

It's all going to the bud.

But there's still enough leaves to kind of support the plant and keep it going.

- [Jamie] Okay, all right.

So you've got next year's crop growing over next to us also.

So those are the ones that have that scion wood already growing up.

Right?

- [Mark] Correct.

- [Jamie] So are those ready to sell yet?

Or where are we at in the stage?

- [Mark] Those trees, for the way that Greenleaf Nursery operates, is those trees will be dug this winter.

And then we will put 'em into containers and grow them for one more growing season.

And then we will sell them.

- [Jamie] Okay.

- [Mark] To the end consumers.

- [Jamie] All right, so we've got 'em-- - [Mark] So we're still two years away even with what we've got here.

- And these are a year old, right?

You grew these as seedlings.

- These seedlings are a year old, yes.

- So you've got what now, four years invested in that peach tree before it gets to the nursery, really?

- Correct, yes.

- So that's what we can soon see at next year's nurseries.

Is that correct?

- Correct, that's right.

- Thank you, Mark, so much for sharing this with us.

- You're welcome.

(upbeat guitar music) - Today, we wanna show you the tree that we have chosen for the Oklahoma Proven program for 2022.

And that is the Ginko.

This is a fun tree.

I love it.

It's one of my favorites.

It's kind of a unique tree because it is one of a kind.

So the genus is Ginko, and the species is Ginko biloba, and that's it.

There is no other species within the genus Ginko.

The other cool thing about this is they have found fossils of the leaves that date back to what they think is maybe 150 million years ago.

It is a native to China.

So it's not a native of ours, but it is a very tough tree.

It tolerates a wide variety of soil conditions.

It's a great urban or street tree because it tolerates compacted soils and dry soils quite well.

Just really needs well drained soils or pretty well drained soils.

So you don't want it sitting in water.

But other than that, this is a pretty tough tree.

Pretty much pest free, good, clean, beautiful foliage.

It's called biloba because if you look at the leaf, you can see that it's kind of split in two, creating two lobes.

It's a nice fan shaped leaf.

And the veins of the leaves are almost parallel to each other.

So it's bright, bright green during the summer.

And then in the fall, it actually turns a bright yellow color, which is really cool.

Now this is a dioecious tree, meaning there's a male and female form of the tree.

It's usually a good idea to choose a male form to avoid the nasty fruit that the female can produce.

They're actually a large fleshy cone.

And when they ripen and fall to the ground, they're really stinky and messy.

So usually, it's a good idea to choose one that we know is a male form of the species.

If you go into the garden center and just buy a Ginko biloba or Ginko, or it's also called Maiden Hair tree, and there's no designation of what it could be, you may not know what it is until it matures like 15, 20 years later.

I mean, it takes a long time for it to mature, which is another thing that's kind of nice about this tree to some degree is it's a very slow grower.

This tree here that we're standing under, it is.

- It's been in here for at least 25 years.

And I'm guessing it's probably only about 30 feet tall now.

So it's a slow grower, which again, can be a plus or a minus.

Because it's slow, you know, you don't really have to worry much about it getting out of control and really have to worry about pruning it or anything like that.

So if you're looking for a great tree that is easy to grow, trouble-free, has wonderful summer foliage, and really bright yellow, fall color, then this might be a great tree for you.

(upbeat music) - We recently learned about how important it is to preserve plants in herbariums.

But as we head into the digital world, we're learning more about how important it is to also digitize some of this.

Joining us today is Dr. Mark Fishbein, who is the director of the OSU Herbarium.

Dr. Fishbein, tell us a little bit...

I guess you recently won a grant, is that correct, to help with this process?

- Yeah, we're actually about two years into a National Science Foundation funded project to bring these plant specimens to the world.

And this is part of a regional consortium with many herbaria across the states of Oklahoma and Texas.

- Okay, so probably about 50 or so herbariums, I'm assuming, is that correct, or...?

- Yeah, there's about 40 in our two states that are involved in this project.

Plus, we are collaborating with the New York Botanical Garden, Missouri Botanical Garden, Harvard University, and other places that have many collections from our states.

- Oh, wow.

So you have these plants scattered throughout Oklahoma, and Texas, and other areas that you're trying to digitize.

Why is that so important?

- Well, there's several reasons.

One is to minimize wear and tear on the specimens.

So many people wanna study our specimens or use them in teaching or in outreach projects, but they're not accessible to everybody.

So by having them digitized and online, not only can many people use them, but for many purposes, they're just as good as digital objects as they are as physical specimens that can be studied.

- That's amazing.

So you're taking it global.

Show us a little bit about this website, if you would please.

- Sure.

This is our TORCH, Texas Oklahoma Regional Consortium of Herbaria data portal.

And from here, we can search collections not only from Texas and Oklahoma, but from around the world on this platform.

But for today, I just want to show you that we can study specimens specifically from our herbarium.

- [Woman] Okay.

- [Dr. Fishbein] And I'm gonna use as an example the ground cherries that were the research focus of one of my predecessors, U.T.

Waterfall.

I'm gonna enter some information, a genus name into the search box here.

- [Woman] And is this something anybody can do if you're wanting to- - [Dr. Fishbein] This is the public face of the portal, so anybody can search for by scientific name, by localities, by collectors, many different criteria.

And when I do this, I pull up 1,738 records, which are the number of digitized specimens of ground cherries that we have in our herbarium.

And because of Waterfall's work, we have specimens from Mexico and all over the world, one of the best collections of this genus in the world.

Because the current digitization project is focused on Texas and Oklahoma specimens, let's take a look at one of these ground cherry specimens that was collected in Texas.

And so, when we click on the image it pulls up the record and we can see the collector, the collector's collection number, the date, the location, various information about the collection.

- [Woman] So this is all the same information that you would find on the actual card too?

- [Dr. Fishbein] That's right.

So if we look at this more closely, and we can zoom in, we can see that this information was transcribed off the label.

- Uh huh.

- [Dr. Fishbein] And we have this beautiful, high-resolution view of the specimen, which can be studied almost to the same extent that you would get from a dissecting microscope.

Although, for some purposes you'd really need to see the physical specimen, but you can tell for many purposes this would be completely sufficient.

- [Woman] Yeah, so obviously this is important, not only for people to have access to all over the world, but also they're not physically handling all of your cards, potentially damaging 'em and that sort of thing as well.

- [Dr. Fishbein] Right.

Yeah.

To me, it's those two things.

Increased accessibility, anybody in the world can see 'em, and then reduced wear and tear on the specimens.

At OSU, we've imaged all of our Texas and Oklahoma specimens and now we're in the process of transcribing them.

And other collections may be further along or not quite as far as we are.

- Uh huh.

I mean, this is...it seems like a lot of work.

(laughs) - [Dr. Fishbein] It is a tremendous amount of work.

It's a four-year grant.

- Image and transcribe and find the digital coordinates for 2 million specimens is our goal.

- Wow.

- And so here's an example of one that we need additional work on.

So we have the image on the specimen, but you see there's really no information.

Just, we only know that it's in Texas.

- Okay.

- So, we would have a student worker in the herbarium or potentially a volunteer come in and access this image and then transcribe this information into our database.

- Okay.

- And in fact, that's the biggest chunk of work we have left to go.

- So, who all is doing this?

You mentioned some students, but that seems like you're not gonna get that done in four years.

- Yeah, I think just with student workers, we might not get to our goals so we're looking for volunteers.

There are some citizen science platforms.

There's one called Notes for Nature, that we can send our images to and then interested people, and there are many interested people around the world, can log into that platform and do transcriptions because they love learning about history or about plants, plant distributions, or plant taxonomy.

And we also are happy to have volunteers work directly with us at the herbarium.

- Okay, so they can actually come in and do it that way or online wherever you are, you can.

- Wherever you are.

So I think they can just contact me directly and my email address is mark.fishbein@okstate.edu and also I can be contacted through our web portal at portal.torcherbaria.org - All right, excellent.

Well, this is a great resource to know about not only if you're just interested in learning about plants but especially if you wanna help with this effort.

So thank you Dr. Fishbein for joining us.

And we'd love to check back in with you on this progress as it continues.

- Oh, you're welcome.

Thanks for coming.

(bouncy upbeat guitar music) - There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(plucky banjo music) - Next week on Oklahoma Gardening, we've got more horticulture coming your way.

Join us as we show you more plants that are thriving in this heat.

- So be aware of that.

But other than that, it's a great.

- Plant.

- Plant.

- And okay.

- Just hold it.

- Gotta hold it.

- Bailey, kinda need you to drive better.

(guitar strumming) - 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.

(guitar strumming)