(bright music) (lively classical music) - Welcome to "Oklahoma Gardening."

Today, I'll give you an update on the species tulips we planted a couple of years ago.

I'm dividing some alliums.

We've got some helpful tips if you're on the hunt for morel mushrooms.

And finally, we've got some exciting news to share about the Botanic Gardens at OSU.

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

So if you're looking for an easy, low-maintenance perennial.

(lively classical music) We have two different types of flowers on one plant.

Capsaicinoids that gives the pepper its heat.

(lively classical music) Last spring, we did a segment on species tulips and how different they are from your traditional hybrid tulip.

Now, as you can see, they do look a little bit different.

In fact, they're a little daintier than our traditional hybrid tulips that we often think of with their bold color and their wide strappy foliage.

Now, the thing about the hybrid tulips, while we love them, we only get one growing season out of them 'cause they typically are served as an annual here in our garden.

Now, the neat thing about the species tulips is that they're often touted as being perennials.

So we all know though, reading something can be a lot different than actually trialing something in your garden, especially here in Oklahoma.

So about two years ago, we went and bought every type of species tulip that we could find on the market, and we have planted two plots of each one of them along our walkway here.

Now, of course, last spring, we went over all of the different types that we had planted here and we had great success with them.

But that was their first year so we expected them to come up.

This is the second season, so I wanted to report back to you and let you know what we're actually seeing, returning as a perennial here in our garden.

Last year, one of the first ones to bloom for us was Tulipa clusiana variety chrysantha.

And I'm happy to report that this one came back up in both plots for us this season also.

Within Tulipa clusiana, there are a couple of additional varieties we tested.

Lady Jane has shown to be just as hardy with both plots returning.

However, peppermint stick and variety stellata are showing to be a little more reluctant to return.

Both have one plot that isn't showing any foliage, and one plot with foliage, but no buds.

Continuing on with tulips that have returned the second season are Tulipa sylvestris that has a pure yellow color, Tulipa whittallii with a bit more of a traditional coppery orange tulip look, but still is slightly smaller, Persian pearl is a deep rich purple with a yellow center.

And now, I wanna mention though, last year I did say that Persian pearl was a little disappointing because the flowers were blooming really low into the ground.

However, I'm happy to report that they are much taller this season, while still kind of a shorter tulip.

So I suspect the fact that last year they were blooming so low was more because of our initial planting depth.

Also, Tulipa bakeri, which is a lilac wonder also successfully returned in both plots and offers a soft pink color in the garden.

Now, switching to some of the species tulips, in which we're seeing some mixed results is Tulipa turkestancia with a little bit more of a unique look.

It bears several star-shaped flowers on each stem.

In one plot, it has returned quite well, and in the other, we have yet to see anything.

Shogun and bronze charm, both with orange flowers have only shown to grow foliage in one plot at this point.

However, I must recognize that bronze charm was one of the later ones to bloom last year so we'll continue to watch for it.

Finally, we had two species tulips that have not shown any signs of returning in either plots.

One is Tulipa linifolia, which has red flowers, and while at this point, we aren't seeing anything, again, it was noted last year as being one of the last ones to bloom so it might still emerge a little bit later.

The other one is Tulipa tarda.

And unfortunately, we haven't seen anything growing in either one of those plots, so it may mean that it is not going to return for us this year.

Now, I have to admit, this was just a small demonstration and so take it for what it is.

This isn't research or anything like that.

And we also didn't protect any of these tulips.

They have not been protected from wildlife that might have come in and dug some of these, although we haven't seen any signs of that.

And also we've had a lot of fluctuating temperatures over the last two season.

In fact, we've had some freeze damage that we've noted on some of these as well on the flower buds because of late freezes.

The other thing too is they are kind of in an area that has got a lot of traffic coming through here, both with mowers and people.

And so who knows, there are a number of factors that could have influenced why they maybe didn't return this year.

However, if you do wanna add some species tulips that have shown to return in "Oklahoma Gardens," check out this list.

- Alliums are great plants to add to the garden.

In fact, they come in a range of different styles that you could actually incorporate for different design purposes in your garden.

There are a lot of alliums.

In fact, it's one of the largest genres in the Amaryllidaceae family, with over 850 species.

Now, they are true bulbs, and so in some cases, some of the larger alliums, you could actually plant individual bulbs.

And then some, like what we have here, it creates more of a clump, and you can get several flowers out of that clump.

Now, there's probably one allium that you're very familiar with, and that's onion.

Of course, you know it as a single bulb that you can plant.

So the thing that alliums have in common is that they often have this strappy like foliage, and that's because they are monocots, so they kind of have that grass-like vegetation.

The other thing is, is when they have a flower, they produce a round umbel flour.

So some of those, some of the single ornamental bulbs can be quite large.

But what we have here is known as the millennium allium, and it's actually a clump-forming allium.

Now, when I first saw this allium I really appreciated it for its design ornamental feature, because it blooms later in the season than some of your other alliums and chives and things like that, so this is gonna bloom later.

But it's gonna have a real vibrant pink almost purple flower on it that's about two inches in diameter.

So it'll have a lot of those.

You can see some of these old stems on here from last year's flowers.

And we have this growing here in a pot, but it's been successful.

You can see it's really taken off and spread.

So at this point, we're gonna take it out and divide it.

So in order to do that, I'm just gonna kind of tip this container over.

It's pretty dry actually, so it falls out easily.

And you can see that root mass, so it's been very happy in here.

And in order to divide these, what we're gonna do is sort of look to see if there's any natural division in here.

But really you're just gonna take a knife or a saw.

These garden saws work really well to split them, and start cutting them in half.

And as we do this, you'll probably notice that (saw rubbing) a lot of the roots are actually on the exterior.

So as we split it up, you'll notice there's all these roots on the outside.

That's because they've hit the side of the pot and started circling.

Meanwhile, on the inside, there's not as much roots.

So this is one reason, especially if it's in a container, you wanna make sure that you are dividing those up.

So we're just gonna leave that kind of as one clump, because most of this you can see is just potting soil over here.

Now this, we can get several, probably three more cuttings out of it.

Again, we're just gonna go in here and saw it in half.

This is the same as what you would do for ornamental grasses too, to divide them.

Now one thing, if this was smell-a-vision, you would notice is you're gonna definitely get that onion and garlic smell.

Again, that's characteristic of all alliums.

So here we have another clump that we can plant in the garden.

And when we do that, again we just wanna make sure that we're kind of breaking up those roots on the exterior, so they don't continue to circle.

And now we've got one more clump, and I'm just gonna divide this in half here.

(saw rubbing) And simply cut it just like that.

So you can see some of those bulbs that are down there at the base.

And that's okay if you've accidentally cut those in half.

It doesn't have to be exact.

But there's gonna be enough for it to continue on as a plant.

Now, if you were to divide this a lot more, you could get several plants out of this.

But be mindful that the more you divide it, the more susceptible those divisions are to drying out, so be aware of that.

So I think we're gonna stop at four here, and this will give us a nice start for our next spring's garden.

Now because these bloom so late in the season you can either do this early in the spring, because they haven't started producing any flower buds.

Or you can do this later in the fall as well.

(easy music) (easy music continues) Today we are out here, and joining me is Jacob DeVecchio, who is the CEO of the Oklahoma Fungi Company.

- That's right.

- Jacob, it's morel season.

There's kind of a fever in the air.

- (laughs) There sure is.

- So I personally have never morel hunt, hunted, I guess you'd call it.

- Yeah.

Hunting, foraging, whichever you like to say.

- (laughs) Okay, so tell me, I mean, is this a good area, or what are we looking?

- What's the season?

- Yeah, typically morels will grow mid-March to the beginning of May.

When you see the red buds blooming, that's a great indicator that the morels are starting to grow.

But the morels are dependent on rain.

And so if we don't have any rain, we won't see any morels.

- It's kind of been lack of rain up here in the North Northwest.

- Yeah, over by the riverbank and down by creeks is oftentimes where you'll find these things growing.

- Okay.

So we are by the riverbank here, but before we get started, am I dressed okay?

Like there's certain things you need to take with you, right?

- There are a couple of things that you wanna bring with you when you're foraging and not just bring with you, but that you wanna wear.

And so a couple of the things that you wanna bring are, of course, a mushroom identification guide.

So you know that the mushrooms that you're looking at are actually the species that you're trying to identify.

- That's important.

- All mushrooms are edible, some only once.

So very important to keep in mind.

Another great thing to bring with you once you found an edible mushroom is a mesh bag.

The holes in the bag allow for the spores to spread throughout the forest on your hiking trail as your way out.

So you're actually helping the organism spread and help distribute the spores.

- Okay.

And I've heard about that, like not taking plastic bag that will kind of allow that to get some of the dirt off as well.

- Yeah.

And one of the other things that I often recommend is to bring some insect repellent.

So whether you use deed or not is up to personal preference, but I highly recommend wearing insect repellent because there are a lot of ticks out there and a lot of other biting insects that I don't want biting me while I'm foraging morels.

- And they're not always on a path, right?

You really kind of sometimes have to get into the rough areas.

- Yeah.

There are times where they'll grow in your front yard if you're lucky.

And a lot of other people like me have to get out into the thick of it and find them.

Absolutely.

- So anything else, do you have pruners or is there a knife or anything that we- - One last thing that you could bring is if you are out in the thick of the forest, you can bring some pruners.

And this will help you cut away those thick briar patches.

So whenever your leg is caught, you can take these out and cut away those thorns.

Cause if you yank your legs, sometimes those thorns will go deeper into your leg.

And the last thing we want is to have to leave a good morel foraging spot because of some hurt ankles.

- Maybe some band-aids too.

- Absolutely.

And so there's one last thing that I always recommend people take, and it's really important to keep in mind whenever you're harvesting edible mushrooms, if they're coming from the ground, you want to cut them from the ground.

You don't wanna pull.

Whenever you pull the mushroom from the ground, it brings up that soil and it disturbs that part of the forest.

So I always recommend bringing whether it's a mushroom forging knife like this with a brush on the end to clean off dirt or just a regular pocket knife.

And so whether you bring a knife or not, whether it's foraging or a regular pocket knife is up to you.

This is $50 and a pocket knife most of the time everyone has at their house.

So you don't need anything special, but it is important to cut and not pluck.

It'll also keep your mesh bag cleaner as you're walking through the forest and you don't have to clean them as much when you get home.

- Okay.

Excellent information.

So let's talk a little bit in general about morels.

They're so popular, they're tasty, right?

- Absolutely.

They are.

- So what is it about thel that it's different than like our white button mushrooms, right?

So what's so unique about it?

- So one unique thing about morels is no one yet in the US has learned how to grow them and is exporting them to other states.

And so right now everyone who's eating morels is oftentimes getting them from someone who's went out foraging.

And so I myself will go out foraging mid-March to May to look for these mushrooms and I'll dehydrate them and save them for later months and eat them later.

And so you can eat them fresh or you can dehydrate them and save 'em for later.

And so that's one great thing about them.

- [Interviewer] So what about the region?

Like are they just towards Oklahoma or are they across the country or?

- [Interviewee] So they're across the country and across the world.

The yellow morels, Marchello Americana that grows here in Oklahoma actually grows throughout the world.

And so there are other lookalikes.

There's the false morel.

- [Interviewer] I heard about that one.

Yeah.

- There's also the burn morel.

So there's a lot of other species of morels, but the yellow morel, Marchello Americana is what everyone's looking for.

So once you've got your backpack, you have a pocket knife and a mesh bag, the next thing you wanna do is make sure you're wearing the right attire.

I would prefer to wear long sleeves so that way any ticks are biting insects don't land on me, they land on the clothes you can take off later.

I also recommend wearing long pants and boots.

There's a lot of thorns and strong branches that can hurt your feet.

So wearing nice boots or rain boots also helps keep those insects out.

And when it comes to actually getting out in the forest, a couple- - Yeah.

What scenes are we looking for?

Right?

There's kind of natural areas.

- Yeah.

Some of the things you wanna look for are down by creeks where there's access to water.

Right now we haven't had a lot of rain.

So for the most part, places where there are moist around Cedars or around creek banks are gonna have that moisture that we're looking for.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

Because cedars drop a lot of moisture.

So they make that available to- - [Interviewee] Even though they're invasive, they tap really deep and they bring up a lot of that moisture and those morels that grow around them oftentimes are some of the largest that you'll find.

- Okay.

All right.

So what about like decaying stuff?

I always think of decaying things with mushroom.

Is that what we're looking for?

Logs that have fallen and stuff.

- Absolutely.

So we're looking for not necessarily the trees that are alive, but some of the trees that are already dying or dead.

So what we call dead fall.

And so dead fall is a a tree that has fallen over, branches that are on the ground and a lot of leaf litter.

Those areas, morels love the camouflage and they're really hard to find.

You can't find them mid-March to the beginning of May, but after that the soil temperature is too warm.

- Okay.

Well let me ask you cause I've heard some different gimmicks out there that there's some glasses that will help kind of set the morels apart from the leaf litter.

Do those work?

- So in my experience, the fungi glasses are not something that I would spend $90 on.

The blue tint that they have isn't something that the morels are gonna pop out and you actually see, I would rather save that $90, put it towards gas money on going out to the trail and spend some time looking.

- Okay, well, shall we go on a hunt then?

- Absolutely, let's get started.

- All right.

- So typically we'll find morels around fallen trees or old stumps.

And we actually have some right here.

You can see this one right here is fresh.

It's nice and yellow.

And over here closer to you is one that's been sunburned and it's a little bit darker.

Both of these are the same species and great job, you found another one over here.

There's probably a lot more growing in this area that are smaller.

We're just waiting on rain to come and they'll get a lot bigger.

- Okay, so these are the same, one's yellow, one's brown.

Tell me a little bit, is it past harvest or why is it like that?

- So this one just has more moisture content and it has a lot more water it has absorbed from the soil, whereas this one's a little bit older and it's been sunburned, just had that direct heat right on it.

And it's lost a lot of that moisture.

- Okay.

- Whenever the morels are covered by leaves like this, they can retain that moisture, but when they're exposed to the sun, oftentimes they'll dry out.

- Okay.

- And I guarantee that this one in about two days will look just like that if we don't get any rain.

- So should, can we harvest this still or is it?

- Yeah, this one you could definitely harvest.

Both of them you'd prep the same way.

Although this one of course aesthetically looks a little bit nicer.

- Okay.

- But they're both the same species.

And one way that we can check is by pulling out the identification guide.

So we'll go to the morel side and right here at the very bottom we see yellow morel and we see it.

And this is basically what we're looking at right here.

- Okay.

- And so now I'm gonna take out the foraging knife.

We'll let you move around the leaves and we'll show you how to harvest instead of pluck.

- Okay.

- Also gonna bring out this mesh bag so that way we can put our harvested morel in here and allow the spores to spread around.

- So we just kind of clean the area around?

- You got it.

So that way we can see the base.

And so you can see down here at the base there's a lot of ridges.

- Okay.

- And those ridges help with the stability of the morel.

As the water comes and it runs off or as the leaves change and shift, that stability helps the morale stand upright and grow without falling over and dying.

So instead of pulling this from the ground and having a lot of dirt on it, we're gonna take our knife, we're gonna place it along the ground and we're slowly gonna cut.

- Okay.

- This will allow us to keep dirt off of the morel.

And if there is any dirt we can take the brush and we can brush it right off.

- Alright.

- Now we wanna make sure we don't pull it from the ground because that will disturb the soil.

All we need is this.

And the soil can also make our bag a little dirty.

- And let's talk a little, this is the fruiting body, right?

The organism is hidden underground.

So by taking this, are we robbing it from anything or?

- This is comparable to an apple growing from an apple tree.

So the organism is always underground and living no matter the season, but they only actually produce these morels mid-march until the beginning of May.

And that's because the soil temperature and the rain is optimal for them to grow.

- Okay, so how do we know this is a morel?

- Well, one thing that I can see very clearly is the hole at the bottom, and that's hollow.

You can see all the way through to the top.

And that's something that a lot of morels have.

But one thing that we can do to make sure that this is exactly the species we think it is is to cut it right down the middle and make sure it's hollow.

- Okay.

So hollow is the key.

- That's right.

So we're gonna go ahead and do that.

And as you can see, those are nice and hollow.

- Yeah.

- They're a little bit colder on the inside as well.

- They are cool, yeah, that's interesting because it's hot today.

- It sure is.

Yeah, and so you can see this one over here is a bit overwhelmed by the heat but on the inside of the morels it's nice and cool.

And when this leaf litter covers them it helps them retain their moisture.

- Okay.

So because it's hot, we're doing this in the afternoon, is there a better time, should we be doing this in the morning, like cut flowers?

- Well, for us the morning would be better 'cause it's a little bit cooler.

But for the morels, they're always here.

They won't move locations and they're not gonna grow exponentially from the morning to the afternoon.

It takes them a couple days to get larger.

One thing that's really important is rain.

So if we were to get rain tomorrow I would recommend leaving these to get a little bit bigger and coming back on day three.

You can think of morel mushrooms as a sponge in the forest.

The outside of them looks like a sponge.

And whenever you cook them, they act like a sponge.

They absorb all the flavor of your dish.

So when you eat them, they don't taste like mushrooms.

They taste like the sauce you cook them in.

- Alright, well Jacob, thank you so much.

This was a pleasure harvesting my first morel.

Should we keep looking for a few more?

- Absolutely, let's keep going.

It was a pleasure.

(gentle music) - The botanic gardens here at OSU is also home of Oklahoma gardening.

And so we always like to keep you up to date on what's happening here at the botanic garden.

And joining me today is Dr. Lou Anella, who is the director.

And you've got some exciting news to share with us.

Tell us what's going on.

- A new building.

- Yes.

- So we're calling it the Horticulture Education Center, and it's 2100 square feet.

We have not had a building for about three years.

We have not had a classroom out here for about three years.

So we're really excited to have a building, or soon have a building back.

So construction has started.

- And we are on the south end of the botanic gardens right off of Highway 51, so it's easy access.

- It's gonna be much better, much easier access for people.

And also we'll have a separate parking lot here because this building, the people that use the building are very often a different audience from the people that use the garden.

- So we'll have a parking lot for the garden and then a parking lot for the building.

And it's like you said, it's so close to the highway.

Easy access.

It'll be great.

- So people using the building, who can use the building?

- Well, we're not going to rent it out for private use but we will let people that are allied with our mission to use it.

So the Oklahoma Hort Society, the Payne County Audubon Society, we love to form those partnerships because that's programming than then we don't have to do.

You know, they partner with us and they do the programming and that's great, we love that.

But we won't be doing weddings and things like that.

- Okay and of course, we offer a lot of master gardener tours here and training so I know they're looking forward to this as well.

- Right, so it's great for doing workshops but also it's great to have that space in case the weather turns bad.

So, you know, people are investing time and money to get here and maybe bringing a whole group and we don't want their whole day to be wasted if it's raining.

And so at least then we can have a space indoors maybe give a PowerPoint presentation or something like that.

- And now we're not just talking towards the adult audience, right?

It's gonna be an opportunity for youth education as well?

- Right, so Dr. Shelley Mitchell will be housed in this building or have an office in here at least.

And so she'll be able to do a lot more youth programming.

Andrine Shufran is going to host her open houses for the insect adventure here at this new building.

And so we'll have, it's all about programming, programming, programming, programming, so.

- Which is exciting for the Botanic Garden to really have more of an opportunity to do those educational activities.

- Right, so we've really needed this space and so we're really excited to have that back.

- So last week we had a big event, can you tell us a little bit about that?

- Well, we had the groundbreaking and so that was great.

So our donors were all here.

This is a really great public-private partnership.

And so our donors were all here.

TSET gave us a big grant to help build this, the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

And so they were here, our private donors were here.

And then of course we had the support of department people, our ambassadors, friends, it was a really nice event and a lot of people were here.

- Well, thank you so much for sharing this.

I know it's an exciting opportunity.

Any idea on the timeline a little bit?

Just watch and see it?

- Yeah, well, one never knows but we're hoping for September, October.

- Okay, well, if there's anything that's gonna make it rain, it's a construction project, right?

So we are looking forward to this project developing and we will keep you updated also as it develops.

(bright upbeat music) - [Narrator] There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(bright upbeat music) Next week on "Oklahoma Gardening", join us as it's finally time to get the garden planted.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music) 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 and Instagram.

You can find this entire show and other recent shows as well as individual segments on our Oklahoma Gardening YouTube channel.

Tune in to our OK Gardening Classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous hosts.

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

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

We would like to thank our generous underwriter, the Oklahoma Department of 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.

(bright upbeat music)