- While it might seem that nurseries are just now gearing up for the spring season, oftentimes many years of preparation goes into planning each new spring.

Recently, Oklahoma Gardening went on the road to Sedan Kansas.

Sedan Floral, a family owned nursery operation with close ties to Oklahoma, was generous enough to open their greenhouse doors to the Oklahoma Nursery and Landscape Association, master Gardeners and other plant enthusiasts.

While participants were able to engage in educational activities such as lectures and also greenhouse tours, we pulled aside several of the speakers to learn more about their role in the horticulture industry.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, food and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma Green and growing.

Oklahoma Gardening is also a proud partner with Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust shape your future, provides resources for Oklahomans to make the healthy choice, the easy choice.

Oklahoma Gardening's 50th anniversary.

I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

- People in Oklahoma love their gardens.

- I feel like this is the People's Show.

We all know we're working towards the common goal, and that's to produce the best quality television and information for our audience.

Today we are just across the northern Oklahoma border at Sedan, Kansas, and we are here at Sedan Floral.

And joining me is Jonathan Coday, who is the president of this operation.

And you're selling a whole lot of wholesale plants to those local independent nurseries, and people are anxious to get 'em.

Tell, tell us a little bit about this process.

- Absolutely.

Well, we're a small family business.

We've got about 20 acres of greenhouse.

We'll sell flowers to garden centers in about a 500 mile circle around southeast Kansas.

So multiple states.

We've got annuals, perennials, vegetables, grasses, hanging baskets.

- You've got 'em everywhere.

Everywhere.

And at this point, things are kind of busting at the seams.

Oh, yeah.

It seems like ready to go out.

Absolutely.

So when you buy these in, like you buy in plugs, is that the process or tell us a little bit about that.

We - Start almost everything, either a seed or a small cutting.

- Okay.

- And then, we'll, we'll propagate it or germinate it, grow the plugs ourselves, and then transplant them into the finished containers.

- Okay.

- Once they get in the finished containers, we grow 'em up, they look pretty, we put 'em on a truck, ship 'em out and, and to the garden centers.

- All right.

And so you can find sedan, floral plants.

I've seen your pots and your containers at a lot of different nurseries around the state.

And that's where really where you kind of focus on is those independent nurseries.

Is that correct?

- Yep.

Yep.

Mostly independent garden centers.

There's family owned hardware stores.

There's the landscape segment there.

There's a lot of different animals.

We don't really have just one customer.

We've got a, a tremendous, tremendous number of customers.

- And your customer service, I hear, is kind of what makes you special from a lot.

- We hope.

We hope.

We try, we try, we'll do about anything we can to get the flowers out the door and to the customers.

- So you have 20 acres you've mentioned, or about close to That's a pretty large greenhouse, right?

Compared to - Area?

It keeps us busy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It keeps us busy.

- Okay.

So tell me, we've got, I, I see perennials, I see annuals and vegetables also.

Do you do ornamental grasses?

Small?

- We do.

Okay.

We do got a small line of, of ornamental grasses.

There's probably a dozen or so in that lineup.

Make for great accent plants.

- And how do you stay with, like, what's coming out and what's new?

There's always new plants coming out.

How do you stay up on that?

- We, we try our best to get out and, and tour other towns, look and see what's in the landscape.

We, we constantly are listening to our customers to see what their feedback is.

We're, we're just trying to be as, as close to the market as we can to see what the trends are.

- Okay.

- But we are also kind of slow to move with our size and our scale.

It's hard to have the latest, greatest, newest, everything.

- Yeah.

- But once we've figured it out, then we can bring it up to, to quantities and bring it out.

- Okay.

And obviously it's spring right now.

What would this greenhouse look like?

Come fall?

- In?

Fall?

It'll, it'll switch.

It'll be full wall to wall with mums.

- Okay.

- So preferably, there'll be a, a time where it's completely empty and just concrete in between, you know, ideally we've sold everything in spring, but, but yeah.

It, the greenhouse changes quickly.

Quickly.

Everything that was out here just a few weeks ago was concrete, and now it's full of flowers.

- Very good.

Well, I know people are anxious to get their hands on 'em.

So thank you so much for sharing this process with us.

Joining me next is Bill Calkins with Ball Horticultural Company.

And you are, your company's really responsible for producing a lot of seeds for our industry.

So let's talk a little bit about that aspect of the horticulture world, if you would.

- Sounds good.

Ball has been in business for more than 125 years.

We're a fourth generation family owned business.

Started with seed, and now we've moved into vegetative plants.

So seeds, plugs, vegetative liners, vegetative cuttings, perennials.

You do it all.

Bruises.

We do it all.

- Okay.

So I think most people, you, for your seeds.

Let's talk about, you know, what you're kind of doing to stay current with that seed production.

- So seed production's done, most of it's done offshore.

And then the seeds are brought into North America, sold to greenhouses.

We package them in West Chicago, Illinois.

Okay.

And ship 'em out to customers from there.

It's, it's actually a pretty high tech business.

- Okay.

So when we talk about all of the new plants that are coming on the market, 'cause everybody's always getting the catalog.

Oh yeah.

Looking for the new stuff.

What, how do you stay current with what y'all are producing that is new?

- I think that the, the current trend in a lot of breeding is to produce crops that are easier for growers, easier for the end user, whether that's a, you know, home gardener or a landscaper.

But we're trying to take away some of the, there's not a lot of tolerance for failure right now.

Right.

So we're trying to breed plants that are better for all levels of the industry.

- Okay.

So you want the consumer to be successful Oh, yeah.

As well as places like Sedan, floral to be successful, obviously.

- Definitely.

And what Sedan does producing so many seed crops, I mean, we're standing in the midst of probably a million plugs right now.

- Yeah.

- They need the absolute best seed quality.

They need disease resistance.

They need seed treatments that allow them to be more effective and efficient growers.

And that's really one of Ball's specialties is in the different forms of seed and processing we do on seeds.

- Okay.

And let's kind of flip it.

What are more the concerns on the consumer side to make them more successful?

- I think the consumer side concerns are definitely disease and failure.

Right?

It's, it's, I plant these flowers and then they, they die.

And I, I don't think most people know why they die.

So they tend to think that failure's on them.

And it's usually not.

Sometimes it's, it's disease in the environment.

So a lot of, a lot of breeding work right now is being done.

Some minimize disease.

We just looked at some vinca that were bred for resistance to aerial phyto throw, which is a very common disease in landscapes.

- Right.

A lot of times when you plant something in the same spot over and over that gets in that soil there.

Right.

- Exactly.

Impatience is another great example.

We had Downey mildew that inpatients Downey mildew disease wiped out most impatience in North America.

And breeding companies like Pan-American Seed, who's a ball company, Syngenta seed are breeding disease resistant or highly resistant.

Inpatients now.

So we have that great shade plant back.

- Okay.

And I, and I, when we talk about breeding, a lot of times people think, oh, are these GMOs?

Or what are we doing here?

Can we talk to that a little bit?

- All I can say is there's not - Traditional, - The horticulture industry is not big enough to really take, I guess, take advantage or use that kind of breeding.

Okay.

So we're pretty much all traditional plant breeders.

Old school.

- Yeah.

- Kind of doing it the way it's always been done.

- So you're just finding the rare trait and then propagating - That, crossing it and crossing it and crossing it and replicating it and selecting the best.

- Okay.

Well also, I know a lot of times we, we see things come out are, here's another Petya or something like that.

But there's so many different characteristics that people are looking for.

Right.

- I think - Sun shade.

- Right.

For sure.

Sun shade drought tolerant right now.

Some of the trends are like big tropical color.

- Okay.

- There was a new Lantana we brought out a couple years ago called Passion Fruit.

That's, I mean, it's like every tropical color in the rainbow.

- Oh, wow.

- And then Cali Burst.

Petunia is a cross between Petunia and Cacoa.

So kind of a smaller flowered Petunia, but bright, vibrant yellows.

Yeah.

A lot of the breedings being done to peak consumer interest, but also make sure the growers can be successful.

- And let's talk about that on a regional scale too.

And the success of that, if you don't mind.

- Yes.

So I think historically a lot of, a lot of plants were just sort of used across North America.

And now we're, we're much better, I think as all the breeding companies are better at selecting these plants for regional regionality success in different regions.

Like I said, drought tolerance and drought tolerant regions versus, you know, plants for the Midwest where the humidity is extremely high.

- Right.

And when you say full sun in Oklahoma, that can be different than up north.

Right.

Whole - Different type of full sun, that's for sure.

- Very good.

So Bill, you've been in this industry for a while.

Yeah.

You, you guys went through Covid.

Tell me a little bit what you're seeing with the industry pre and post Covid also, - We had a, a pandemic boom in 2021 and 2022.

Our industry saw huge growth in sales dollars, but also in the number of customers that were coming into garden centers.

And the exciting thing is that we retained a lot of those customers, which tend to be the Gen Y millennial age, which is really hitting their peak spending years and is a massive generation.

So it's really exciting for our industry to have a whole new influx of customers that are excited about the plants produced, whether it's annuals, perennials, tropicals, really just, just about everything across the board.

They're buying houses, they're planting vegetables, they're raising their kids in the garden.

It's, it's about as exciting as it gets.

- That's exciting.

Are there any other trends that really you're trying to cater to them now?

Or seeing - Miniature vegetable - Plants?

Okay.

- So Pan American Seed, one of the companies within the ball organization, it has a program called Kitchen Minis.

And it's small sized plants, vegetables, mostly tomatoes, peppers for window sills and small, I guess, patio gardens.

- Right.

- Which we're seeing as a, as a huge trend.

Kitchen Minis is a great program and that whole movement towards smaller size vegetables I think is really - Exciting.

Which is a great way for somebody getting into gardening that maybe doesn't have a full garden, just a townhouse house.

It works for them as well.

Yeah.

- Try some tomatoes and then plant all your beds.

- Well, we appreciate all the plants that are coming through ball seed and gonna be on the market soon.

Thank you so much for sharing - For that.

Anytime.

Anytime.

Thank you.

- Joining us next is Joel Keer with Express Seed.

And Joel, you're kind of behind the scenes as far as consumers know you are a planting seed broker.

Let's talk a little bit about that role.

- Sure.

A, a lot of people don't really think about where the plants they find at their garden center originate.

Right.

How that whole supply chain works.

So at the Garden Center, these plants come from commercial growers like Sedan Floral, who grew all, all of this product.

- Yes.

- But Sedan Floral purchased their inputs from a broker company like Express Seed.

So we sell seed, we sell cuttings, we sell tissue culture, we sell bulbs and bare root, we sell plugs liners across all categories.

So annuals, perennials, woody's, cut flowers, herbs and vegetables, indoor potted crops, foliage and succulents.

So that all comes from companies like ours.

And we work closely with breeders across the globe to develop new varieties and help them decide which varieties need to make it into the commercial production in the in North America.

- Right.

And there's so much going on behind the scenes to actually bring those to the market.

You guys are working years in advance on that.

Right?

- Yeah.

It's funny when people ask me what I do for a living, trying to explain what a broker is and all that goes into it.

Yeah.

So it takes, depending on the product, you know, petunias don't really take that long to develop new varieties and get them commercial.

But things like Geraniums and New Guinea inpatients, those can take five years or more just to get a new variety introduced to the market.

And once they have varieties selected that they think have the traits that the market's looking for, then it goes into testing phases and pre-commercial testing at at large growers across the US.

And once it passes kind of all of those stages, it gets introduced and shown at California Spring trials to be sold commercially at retail garden centers the next year.

- Right.

And so there's a lot of promotion through that whole system, right.

Everybody's kind of trying to promote their product and then you guys pick some of those best ones to then share with the growers.

Right.

Right.

So there's a lot of vetting that happens in that process.

- A lot of vetting.

And one of the best parts that I like about working for Expressed is these genetics are not our own.

And so I'm not obligated to go push any certain product line to our customers.

Okay.

I really get to look and say, this is a key item over here that's gonna work for you as a grower and for your consumers in this region.

And yeah, I get to pick and choose the ones that I really think are best to promote.

- And so it's critical for you to kind of know that customers region and the climate that they're dealing with to know which ones to promote and as well to know the plant very well.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, some things that do well in Michigan won't do well in Oklahoma or Texas and vice versa.

You know, they, they don't do vinca up there and Vincas a huge crop in the south.

- Right.

- So it's just, it's too cold, too short of a summer there.

So it's a very small crop up there where it's one of the biggest things sell down here.

- So speaking of Vincas, I know there's a lot of different plants coming on the market, especially some vincas that maybe are disease resistant.

Can you tell us a little bit about some of those new plants?

- Sure.

So there's a series from Syngenta's, the breeder.

There's a seed series called Cora XDR, and there's a vegetative series called Nirvana, XDR.

And the XDR stands for Extreme Disease Resistance.

- Okay.

- A lot of vinca in the landscape.

If you get heavy rains, they'll get a disease called phytophthora.

- Right.

- And it will wipe out a whole landscape planting if they don't have this resistance.

There are other series on the market that have some resistance, but Cora XDR has resistant to 35 strains of phytophthora.

So if you have had problems with vinca dying in your landscape, especially after a spring rain, first of all, people tend to plant them a little too early when they see 'em at their garden centers.

It's really a summer crop.

But even in the summer, if we get a rain, it can cause phytophthora and vinca.

So using resistant strains like Cora XDR or Nirvana XDR will help overcome that and make sure your landscape stays beautiful all summer.

- And that's just one of the things breeders are doing is kind of looking at breeding for disease resistance.

Right.

I mean, - It's a, it's a huge part of everybody's breeding program, regardless of what it is.

You can have a really cool flower, but if it doesn't stand the test of the landscape in a certain region, it's, it's never gonna have the numbers that you need to see to recoup your investment in the breeding.

- Right.

All right.

So is there any other plants we should be looking out for on the market that are coming up?

- You know, it was introduced last year, so you should be able to find it at retail stores this year.

- Okay.

- But there's a, a sunflower called sun finity double yellow.

- Okay.

- It's got a double flower and it's not a straight up sunflower like you would see on the side of the road.

It is a bush.

It gets about three feet tall and three feet wide loaded with these large yellow double flowers.

Very, very easy to grow.

It's friendly for the, for the commercial growers like sedan, floral, it's friendly for the retailers 'cause it has a good shelf life.

And in the landscape just continues to flower on top of itself.

It will go until frost.

It's a really foolproof plant that will perform everywhere.

- Some of the neat things about some of these plants that are coming on the market is that we're stretching where we can utilize them and how to utilize them.

Whether we're looking for a shorter one or a taller one and go into that different exposure with the sun as well.

That's pretty exciting for us as gardeners.

It - In, in the past there's been kind of a differentiation with Hydrangeas, for example, where this is a pot crop and sold inside the grocery store or a florist shop.

- Right.

- And this is your landscape, you know, your endless summer that will re bloom.

But they've really done a lot of breeding to merge those where you get that look of a forest quality hydrangea that actually works really well in your landscape and will reflow throughout the year.

- Excellent.

All right.

Well if we can just get the blue without having to change our soil.

Right.

Yeah.

It's always gonna be a problem.

Well, thank you so much for sharing this and teasing a few plants for the future to look out for.

- My pleasure.

Thank you.

- Thanks.

Joining me next is Dr. Raymond Cloyd, who is an entomologist for Kansas State University.

And Dr. Cloyd, you are here at the sedan floral I workshop field day to share with us about pest resistance.

And our viewers would love to hear more, I'm sure about this.

Can we first talk about what is resistance?

- Yes.

That's a good question.

Resistance is a genetic composition change in a population.

Resistance is population based.

And that is basically you, that when you follow the label rate, you're not getting substantial management of the pest population below plant damaging levels.

- Okay.

And so how does that resistance develop in that pest population?

- Well, that's a, that's a very complex question, but it's basically the, the overuse or the continued use of the same mode of action over and over again.

And what that does, it puts a selection pressure on the populations where you're killing all the susceptibles, leaving the resistant individuals.

They then breed and now you've get a higher proportion frequency, number of resistant individuals in the population.

And that can occur over one or two applications or over several generations.

- Okay.

And does this kind of vary depending on whether a pest maybe is more isolated versus one that maybe flies in and that sort of stuff to kind of intermingle that population?

- Yeah.

What we see is that if a pest population is mobile, has winged individuals, then there's a, there's a prospect of immigration of individuals.

They will breed with the resistant individuals, either di dilute resistance or delay the development.

However, like spider mites, for example, when they don't fly, then basically there is no immigration and that leads to a higher frequency or proportion of resistant individuals that stay that way.

And those are the populations very difficult to manage with, with the, in this case, minus size.

- Okay.

So what as homeowners can we do in case that resistance is developing?

- Okay.

Once the resistance develops, which you really can't check, the key is using different materials with different modes of action.

- Okay.

- So you don't wanna use the same mode of action like three times in a row once a week.

'cause that puts the selection pressure on the populations and that promotes the development of resistance.

- Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So make sure we're kind of changing it up and maybe hitting different populations and stuff.

- Well, what you're trying to do is you wanna use the same mode of action within, within a life cycle.

- Okay.

- Generationally, but about two weeks that'll shorten in the summertime.

Okay.

And then for the next generation, use a different mode of action.

- Okay.

- So you keep, you're trying to throw the insect populations or might a balance so that they, that that the, the selection pressure for this vote of action is basically gone when you do another - One for the next generation.

Right.

- Okay.

And then because you're putting less selection pressure on the previous populations, there's a prospect that those populations will now be more susceptible.

There may be more migration, or they may revert back to resistance from that one mode of action that's used previously.

- So obviously pest resistance is a concern, but there are sometimes other reasons that pesticide fails.

- Exactly.

And a lot of times it ill is not necessarily resistance, but it's either due to operational factors such as using the wrong material, you know, using the wrong rate, not getting through a coverage of all plant parts, not spraying frequently enough.

And of course, a lot of that's on the label that the people should read before they mix and load.

There's also like the peak of the spray solution.

Okay.

Should be about 5.5 to 6.5.

If it's too high, you get alkaline hydrolysis.

So there are a number of other factors that can translate into - And the lifecycle of the insect too, I would imagine.

- Well, not that, but not all, not all stages are susceptible.

The pesticide.

Right.

The pupa, there's nothing, no spray that kills the pupa.

And the material that kills the eggs are like oils.

So most of your contact materials are only active on the nymphs, LAR and the adults.

- Okay.

- So if you're spraying when 90% of the population is the egg, you're gonna get very little mortality.

And then you get to come back and spray more frequently.

- Okay.

All right.

Which kind of then maybe can cause a problem with resistance later - On right's.

Right.

And so that's why you need to rotate different modes of action Yes.

In order to alleviate, reduce the possibility of resistance developing.

- All right.

Well thank you so much for sharing all this information - With this.

You're welcome.

Yeah.

- You're very welcome.

Yeah.

Joining us is Summer Mazer, who is with the ONLA or the Oklahoma Nursery and Landscape Association and Summer, let's talk about ONLA.

It's a, a big group of very prominent people within the horticulture industry.

- Absolutely.

ONLA has been around for almost a hundred years, and now today we encompass the entire green industry.

So anyone from a grower like sedan to somebody who's in lawn care or irrigation, we hope that they become a member of, of the Oklahoma Nursery and Landscape - Association.

Right.

And I absolutely love coming to these different field days and of course, the final ONLA conference because it's just such great networking.

Absolutely.

And I learned so much from about the industry, from potting soil to new plants that are coming out Yes.

To seeds being produced and things like that.

So - Yeah, - Absolutely.

It's, they're my - Favorite times of the year for sure.

- So if you didn't make it to Sedan floral, this is just the beginning of several different field days ONLA is offering.

Correct?

- Yes.

That's so true.

Okay.

So we have quite a few events this summer we'll be at Taggart's Garden Center.

Okay.

We'll also be at Sooner Plant Farm, and then we'll also be at Total Environment Green Stock Nurseries.

- Okay.

So again, it's kind of spreading around the state to get different audiences and also kind of showcasing the different areas of the horticulture industry with that - Too.

Yeah, absolutely.

Hopefully, because we have 'em kind of spread out around the state, it'll invite more people to come.

Okay.

No matter where you live.

- Okay.

And I know one of the questions is like, well, this seems to be industry focused, which the education sort of is, but is everyone, anyone welcome that has Master Gardeners?

- Absolutely.

- Okay.

- We love it when Master Gardeners come.

Even if, even if you're just, you love gardening, please come.

There's always something new to learn and we'd love to have you.

- Very good.

And finally, the Capstone of the year is the O-N-L-O-N-L-A conference.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

- Yes.

Oklahoma grows 2025 will be November 5th through the seventh.

- Okay.

- It'll be at the Grand Casino in Shawnee.

Excellent.

And it'll be a two day event.

Like usual, we'll have plenty of education, lots of vendors, and we encourage everybody to come.

- Okay.

And it's always at a good event just to network and kind of learn so much from everyone else and a good time.

- Yeah, - For sure.

It feels a little bit like a family reunion - Sometimes.

It does.

It does.

Yeah.

Ev a lot of people know everybody and so welcoming too.

Okay.

- If - You haven't been, so, - And I know there is a registration and a fee for Oklahoma Grows the conference.

True.

But what about these other field days?

- Yes, these field days are free.

- Okay.

- For anybody.

- Okay.

- We'll probably do some registration right before each one, so just check back on our website and we'll have that information.

- Okay.

Mainly for headcounts and that sort of stuff.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay.

All right.

So your website is the best place to get all of this information.

Yes.

As we continue through.

For sure.

Thank you so much, summer.

Oh, - Thank you.

- There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

Join us next week as we're back with a brand new episode of Oklahoma Gardening.

Is that Brian?

I've asked you that before.

That's That's right.

Sorry.

All right.

For real.

- So are we done then?

- No.

No.

If we can just get one more thing once this crowd walks through, but we won't have to start all - Over.

Yeah.

'cause you can edit.

It - Can Yeah.

You 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 Oklahoma gardening dot OK state.edu.

Join in on Facebook 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 okay 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 underwriters, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, food and Forestry, and Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

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.