[Music] gardening today I've got a couple of trees that will fit into several different landscapes we head to Mustang Oklahoma to see how their community garden has partnered with the local library [Music] and finally Jessica riggin is grilling up some vegetables underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture food and Forestry helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing [Music] we have two different types of flowers on one plant [Music] have safe noise that give the pepper its heat foreign you to a couple of trees that go by the common name horn beam and in fact there are two that do really well here in Oklahoma and are in fact Oklahoma plants now the first one is the American horn beam which is carpinus caroliniana and it's actually a slow growing shorter tree so it's only going to get about 20 to 35 feet tall and often has more of a globular form to it now behind me we have the European horn beam which is known as carpinus bachelors and in it gets a little bit taller about 40 to 60 feet tall and it you can see it has a bit more of a pyramidal form to it it is does not require any pruning if you don't want to prune it however it can actually handle a fair bit of pruning because over in Europe they ofte prune these trees down into smaller shrubs and create dense Hedges that way one of the things about the horn beam that they're most noted for is the or bark you can see if you look at te xture that's on the trunks of trees they have kind of this muscly and that's actually another common name for them is muscle wood you migh remember a few years ago when we were on campus looking at columnar trees there is a cultivar of this European horned horn beam that is known as fastidiitis and that is actually a column Nerf form and so it's going to be very tight and narrow and upright which is a nice addition to add in some of those smaller areas to kind of cover up larger tal buildings as we have done here on campus now if these three trees still don't fit in your landscape I've got one more option for you to add hornbeam into your garden [Music] thank you if you've ever visited the botani garden here at OSU you probably walked along this main path that cuts through the garden and on the east side pa th we often like to plant a lot of different perennials now you might remember that we used to plant a penny Sedum called first night that was a very dark ornamental grass that would be about four to five feet tall cr eate a nice division between the pathway and this Garden behind us here well about four years ago we got kind of tired of planting that annual every year and so we looked at another option and today I want to talk about this other horn beam that we have here th dwarf columnar horn beam so it is a European horn beam however you can see that it is a cultivar that's going to stay relatively small and compact unlike the columnar hornbeans that we have seen on campus this one is going to rema about a 10 foot height now when we planted these about four years ago they were only about 18 to 24 inches tall you can see they've more than quadrupled in that time period since we initia planted them as most of them are about six feet in height now we do have some variability in the 16 that we have planted here on the east side now these dwarf horn beams are actually Hardy from zones five to eight so here in Oklahoma we're in that ideal range they're going to remain about two to three feet in width and the nice thing about these is they do not require any pruning at all in fact we have not done anything because they have this dense co habit however they actually serve as a nice shelter for birds and other other Wildlife that might seek some shelter in there now you can see they have a really kind of rough heavily veined leaf and they're also going to have some yellow Fall Foliage so they're very low maintenance a tough plant and a perfect addition for that small backyard garden in order to sort of kind of create a screen now you can see ours are planted about on five foot centers so we're going to have a little bit of space between them but they these column effect as y this walkway here so regardless of whether you have a lot of room or not much room at all there's likely be am that you can add into your landscape [Music please [Music] today we are here at the city of Mustang at the Mustang town center and joining me is Susan Dobbins who is a Canadian County Master Gardener but you spend a lot of your time right here at th Horse garden and Market Susan little bit about what all you have going on well we've been Wild Horse Park since about 2015 and this is our latest project this is fabulous it's a jo collaboration really between the library the Parks and Rec Department Canadian County Master Gardeners and all of the Wild Horse Gardens volunteers an you have a really nice community garden here that's been here for several but this is a lovely addition te about how how do you utilize this greenhouse we utilize it we j March Okay so we've got it all kitted out and so we're still learning as we go but we are using it to grow plants for the community garden one of our big expenses been has been buying plans and so this year we were able to grow a lot of our our seedlings here in the in the garden and everybody learns something at the same time yeah I see you got some your transplants in there so are saving some of the seeds year that way to do that we do we we grow we grow a lot of tomatoes but we have two varieties that really do well for us one is Snow White which is little tiny sweet yellow tomato okay and the other is Tommy toes which is a red salad tomato and they're both hard to find in nurseries but we save the seed from year to year and in the past w struggled to find places to propagate them for us ye ar we were able to start them all in our community garden do it yourself excellent well I know this ga rden is not just only fo r the community but you guys provid lot of Education here tell us a little bit about the programmin on we do and it's always bee important to us to provide programming for the last two years we've worked with the Parks and Recreation Department in the summertime they have a kids day and we've had the kids out here one morning a week during that during their camp and we really found the kids we do a little lesson and then we just get out in the garden and they want to se what's changed what's going on that d in the garden but a lot of our programming this last year has been in in service of the greenhouse Julie's commitment to get us the greenhouse was that we would teach classes for how to grow your own fo and I I've done some the Master Gardeners have done some and Courtney and Keck are our Canadian County Horticulture educator has done quite a few of them and we'v actually we've paid off the greenhouse we've done a Year's already but we're not stopping we want to continue to have people this Garden is as much about teaching people as it is uh feeding people right and you're reaching all ages from the kids camp to you know the older citizens that maybe need that fresh vegetables and stuff like that we are we an d the health of getting out and doing it too right so well and that's the city's parks and rec department has has always helped us in the past because most of the full-time volunteers are older and we can't do a lot of the stuff so we've Parks and Rec we'll get people out here to to do things well I know use their equipment I know it's just a thriving place especially once those th e produce really start coming on and I even see you've got a pollinator garden over there was that a project wa s a project of several Girl Scout Troops here in Mustang it's a sustaining project so they needed to do something that would go from year to year so the the beds were built by seven eight-year-old girls and installed With a Little Help from from their parents and from the Master Gardeners th ey've been keeping it up now fo I think it's four years okay well I know you've got some classroom spaces out here to do that programmin mentioned Julie and Nick were bi Partners in this so I'm gonna go catch up with them if you don't mind that would be great thank [Music] thank you [Music] joining me is Julie Sloop who's with the Mustang Public Library and Julie you're kind of the one that got this all started right righ that right well I've been writin for a while with the Oklahoma Department of libraries and The Institute and Library services and it has to do with health healthy living and so I just tried to think of something I could do for the residents of Mustang and working with Susan I came up with the idea to get a greenhouse for our garden it's fantastic because literally right outside the library you have the community garden right which ha success for many years now right so tell us a little bit about what in the grant you kind of proposed for this gree space so what I wanted to do is brin awareness to the garden for our group that Gardens here to let them know that if they spend any time in the garden they can have free food that biggest idea okay so allowing other people to come in and get different stuff that maybe they couldn't ot herwise right right so tell li ttle bit about are you doing programming with the library still going on with the greenhouse yes definitely we've been working with the OSU OKC extension office and with our community gardeners here offering programs for years so it's not something new it's just something different well li ke this greenhouse has been success and what else is on the well we always have exercise classes that we offer for free through Parks and Recreation and then we were thinking about starting a seed Garden okay and we also do healthy cooking so all that's to come so really tying everything together yes well how can people find more information if they're interested in this they can go to the city of Mustang's website or they can stop by the library all right thank you so much you're welcome foreign who is with the city of Mustang and Nick tell us a little bit about why it was so important for the city to also this project well it's just a thing for our community to be able to have and to participate in and to use that system in order to give our people more things that they can do here in this town yeah and I know this of the central Hub of everything Mustang here you've got so much activity and resources here you're not only feeding the mines but also literally feeding them right yes exactly ve so they can come and volunteer and help out and then they're able to also tak some of that product that they've grown and work so hard for a seeing the citizens responding th ey love it it's it's uh there's always somebody out there walking arou looking at it even whe club's not here we just drive by one day and there'll be one or two little families o looking at the Garden so a little bit about specifically ci ty sort came to us with the idea of getting the the greenhouse and we quickly as a way to also add another element to our garden so we quickly put in the concrete slab and got the power ran Toots and then also got water and all the other amenities that are needed for it so a lot of those City Utilities that are necessary and do I hear there's so progress maybe that there might be a building coming soon uh yes hope soon hopefully soon there will be there'll be a nice big M coming at some poi that's excellent I know this is growing facility and we ef fort with all of this thank you very much thank you thank you [Music] often when we think about adding color into our garden we typically think of herbaceous plants but what better way to add color into your garden than also by getting a little shade in the hot summer time so today we are featuring a plant that gets a lot of attention mid-june because people will start asking what is that yellow flowering tree that is out in the landscape this is called Golden Rain tree and it's actually a very nice tree you can see because of these flowers that it produces these will get to be about a foot long and just produce a numerous amount of yellow flowers all over in fact when the winds start blowing and as those flowers start to decline they will fall often crea a golden carpet undernea it sort of has that Golden Rain effect when you're underneath it during the wind also so it sort of just has th falling down on the ground around you now because it is a smaller tree see it gets to be about 30 to 40 feet tall it's well suited for urban environments not only because of aesthetic value but also because it is very drought tolerant and it's also tolerant of air pollutions as well as high ph and also clay soil so that kind of makes it an ideal tree that we often see in urban environments now in addition to these flowers later on in the season these flowers were actually transitioned to sort of th developed these papery Lantern like fruiting seed pods that you can see here some of them are still kind of hanging on from last year and these ac tually start out kind of a lime green but then they'll Fade to m sort of brown dried color again creating a little more of aesthetic interest year round so the leaves are pinnately compound you can see here you've got your rakis down the center here th at mid rib and then you've got leaflets that come off of one whole leaf that is on here it is a deciduous tree and it's Hardy from zones five to nine now it is native originally to Japan Korea and also China which means there's relatively few pest problems here in the United Stat it was introduced back in the 1700s so it's not a new introduction it's been here for quite a while now now I say even though it's utilized a lot in urban environments we've got to give a word of caution because it can re fact the Oklahoma invasive plant Council has it on their watch list especially down in Southeastern Oklahoma but it has been known to also Escape cultivation in other areas of the state as well and it's believed to be spread sort of by birds and also Waters so while sh ould be some caution about planting this tree you will often find th Rain Tree in the urban landscape [Music] thank you [Music] hi everybody it is a beautiful day outside and we are grilling up some vegetables today it's going to be a grilled vegetable platter that serves u kind of like a salad and to get started we're gonna I've already washed all of my vegetables you can use whatever vegetables you like when you have growing in your garden what whatever your favorites are that's mine just use what you have I've got some zucchini some yellow squash eggplant I have some of these little mini sweet peppers if you have regular bell peppers they would work just the same and I've got mushrooms and some green onions we're going to start by prepping up the mini peppers with them if you were using a whole bell pepper I would say cut it into strips about a half inc our mini sweet peppers I'm just going to take the top off and the in half lengthwise and I'm going to leave them ju that I'm just goi of these green onions and leave them mostly whole so just cut off as yo u think you need to cut off and discard those ends and we're just going to leave the rest just like th now we will move on to our eggplant o squash and our zucchini I don't think eggplant is a very popular vegetable in Oklahoma which is a shame because it's delicious and so if you've never worked with eggplant before you can leave the skin on and that's what I'm going to do today but the skin li ttle tough and so if you don't prefer that you definitely can peel th just going to take the top off and take the bottom off and then I am going to start slicing it lengthwise and um I want each piece to be about a half inch thick and once you've got a little planks of eggplant we're going to take each Plank and kind of cut it in another so you have little half inch rectangles then we are going to cut our zucchini and our yellow squash in exactly the same way definitely want to be careful wi zucchini and the Squash they're round so they might roll and you don't want to cut yourself if it rolls so be sure you're holding it firmly and cutting straight down with yo fingers out of the way foreign so like I said you could peel your eggplant if you want to but eggplant has such a beautiful color and there are a lot of nutrients just underneath the skin of the eggplant and all of your vegetables with skin and so I would say any vegetable that you can eat with the peel on or the skin on I would leave it on you're going to get a much better bang for your buck as far as t nutrients go so now that I have all of my vegetables cut up I am just going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil on them and then season them with a little salt and pepper blend and I'll give them a toss and then I'm going to put them on the grill wi of these vegetables they could easily fall through your grill grates on how your grill grate is shaped and so you have several options here you could cut these vegetables in a different shape and skewer them that way but I found these little disposable grilling racks that you can use for vegetables it's got a smaller hole on it so your vegetables aren't going to fall through Grill baskets for vegetables and fish that would work really well but I like this because it's disposable it'll be easy clean up and I don't have an ywhere anywhere to store so I'm going to set that right down on top of my grill I also have a on my grill and so I'm going to be using both sides kind of see how they perform differently and you could do this inside with a grill pan on your stove if you'd like I'm going to put my bell peppers and mushrooms on the flat top side and then I'm going to put the squash eggplants on the grill side and I'm going to wait on these green onions because they are going to cook fast so we'll put them o while your vegetables are cooking you can make up a really quick dressing for this and we're just going to st about two tablespoons of olive oil and about the same amount of balsamic vinegar and then I'm going to chop up some fresh basil to put in this if you don't have fresh basil you could use dried we 'll throw in a little bit of Italian parsley then I'm going to do a salt and pepper blend and a little bit of garlic powder if you have fresh garlic growing in your garden you could definitely use tha we'll give it a little stir and then when our vegetables are ready we'll just drizzle this over the to once your vegetables are done they may have a nice Char on them that's kind of what you're going for arrange your your long pieces your squash and zucchini and eggplant kind of pretty across the bottom of your plate and then we'll put our Peppers right on top of that I've got my zucchini squash and eggplant all lengthwise across the plate I put my bell peppers on one side and I'm just gonna put my mushrooms along si de of the plate you just think it looks pretty th but it definitely wouldn't hurt anything if it was all mixed up last you're going to take your green onions off and just set them over the you think looks nice and that is our grilled vegetable platter and we can just drizzle this olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing that we made right over the top we have a lot of herbs in here so you may need a little help from so there we have it our grilled vegetable platter this is a really fun option for a side dish when you are doing a backyard barbecue or if you are going somewhere else for a picnic you can do this up and it should travel pretty well if that doesn't get them t vegetables I don't know what you'll try it [Music there are a lot of great Horticulture activities this time of year be co nsider some of these events in the weeks ahead [Music] join us next week right here on Oklahoma gardening as we're talking about summer fruits [Music] but to find out more information about show topics as well as recipes videos articles fact sheets and other resour including a directory of local extension offices be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu join in on Facebook and Instagram [Music] you can find this entire show an 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 Servic as part of the division of agricu 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 Departme Agriculture food and Forestry additional support is also provided by Greenleaf nursery and the garden debut plants the Oklahoma Horticulture Society the Tulsa Garden Club and the Tulsa Garden Center