(bright soft music) - [Narrator] "Oklahoma Gardening" is a production of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Land-Grant mission of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

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

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

(bright soft music) - Welcome to "Oklahoma Gardening".

As we wind down the gardening season, I'll share the November Hort Tips.

We look at an alternative to controlling noxious weeds, and we have a special farewell as Barbara Brown shares a final recipe.

(bright soft music) It's hard to believe that we're almost ready to wrap up another gardening season, but before we do, there are a few things that we can do in our garden before the cold weather pushes us indoors.

So, today we have your November Hort Tips, and as we talk about wrapping things up in the garden, there is one particular thing that you do wanna wrap up and that's any new young trees that you have might've planted.

I know a lot of people planted new trees this past year because of the loss that we took over the ice storm and then also the winter freeze, if you have young trees, a lot of times they have green bark on them or they don't have that mature, chunky bark developed just yet, so, in order to protect them through our winter months, you wanna make sure to wrap them.

This prevents a thing called sun scald.

In the winter months, the sun is at its hottest in the Southwest sky that's usually late in the afternoon, and so that sun really heats up that Southwest direction of the tree trunk, and what happens are those plants cells on that tree trunk are full of moisture and so they really warm up and then quickly as the sun sets, our temperature drops dramatically and sometimes into freezing temperature ranges, and so, that causes those plant cells to then rupture as they freeze.

So, continually day after day, as this happens, more and more plant cells are damaged, especially on that Southwest side, so, often, sun scald therefore, is sometimes named Southwest injury as well.

Now, this isn't something that's gonna cause your tree to die overnight or within one season, like sun damage on our skin though, sometimes it takes time for that scar and that damage to appear, and the same is true with Southwest injury or sun scald on your trees.

So if you don't cover your trees, what happens is a lot of times after a couple of years of this repeated injury, you will finally start to see that scar reveal itself on the Southwest side of that trunk of the tree, and it will look like a damaged wound where those plant cells have been injured.

Now, in order to prevent this from happening to your new tree, you wanna make sure that as we go into those winter months, that you wrap the trunk of your tree, either with a plastic tree wrap that you can easily put around that trunk or perhaps burlap.

So, that will basically, kind of, insulate and protect that young bark as it is exposed to that sunlight in those winter months.

Now, the other thing you wanna keep in mind is boxwoods and other broadleaf evergreens.

So, I know a lot of people lost their hollies and maybe they replaced them with other evergreens, and if you did, evergreens, broadleaf evergreens are also susceptible to freeze and drought in those winter months, and the reason why is because they have a much smaller root system 'cause they were just newly planted.

The other thing about broadleaf evergreens is the fact that they don't lose their leaves.

So, in all of these leaves, they have to maintain a certain amount of moisture.

Well, as we know, as we go into those dry winter months, we have dry winds and so, all of these leaves create more surface area for that wind to pull out that moisture out of those leaves.

The other thing is, if the soil hasn't received enough moisture or perhaps it is frozen, then that plant is not able to take up any moisture that it might be losing out of its leaves.

So, in order to protect your broadleaf evergreens as we headed into those winter months, you wanna make sure that when the temperatures are getting cold, to put a freeze cloth over them or perhaps burlap to help protect them.

The other thing is make sure if you haven't received any significant amount of rainfall in the last month, say about an inch of rain in the last month, you wanna make sure to supplement them with some water or irrigation somehow.

Now, this freeze damage is more a concern if your evergreen plants are planted out in the open where they're more exposed to the wind, but a lot of times we plant our evergreens up underneath the eave of our house near the foundation and so, if you think you might've received significant rainfall, if they are that close or you have a large enough eave, it might be that you still need to water them because they might not have received the rainfall that you thought they did, so, you also wanna check that.

- So as the leaves are beginning to fall, the one area that you really wanna make sure that you're checking in your landscape and raking up those leaves is on your cool season fescue lawn.

As they can shade that turf grass and be detrimental to the overall health of it.

So make sure you're raking your leaves on your krill season lawn, as far as the rest of your garden.

You also wanna make sure that you're picking up any debris that might have been diseased.

Now, most of your leaves that you rake up, you can take to the compost pile but anything that is diseased or infected, or maybe infested with bugs, you do not want to put that in your compost pile.

And it's important to get that out of your garden now, so that things do not overwinter and cause problems next spring, as for the rest of the plant debris that might be dying back, It's actually okay to go ahead and leave it in your garden.

As it sort of acts like an insulation blanket, as we head into those winter months.

Finally, as you work to put your garden to sleep, we all anticipate that first pop of color in the spring.

And now is the time to plan that.

Often times that color in the spring is provided to us by our bulbs.

Now keep in mind as you're planting spring bulbs, it's not too late to go ahead and get them in the ground.

But remember that tulips tend to serve as annuals here, whereas daffodils and hyacinths will continue to return year after year.

(upbeat music) Today we're out here at the range of a research station that's just west of Stillwater's main campus.

And we are out here in a prescribed burn area and talking with Dr. Laura Goodman.

Dr. Goodman, thank you for having us again.

We always enjoy coming out and hear about your research.

So tell us a little bit about this past year in particular and when it was recently burned.

- So this area in our pasture was burned this August, so just about a month ago.

We do burn in other portions of this pasture as well.

We do what's called patch burn grazing.

And so instead of burning the entire pasture, we just burn portions of the pasture, but animals have access to the whole pasture to graze.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- And so this is really beneficial to wildlife species.

It increases plant species diversity, and also kind of the structural differences.

- [Interviewer] Right, some are woodier and some are newer growth and imagine.

- [Laura] Exactly.

Yep.

And it's really excellent for livestock too, 'cause it provides them with really high quality forage.

- Okay, so generally when we talk about livestock grazing, we're talking often about cattle grazing, but y'all are trying something new out here.

Can you tell us a little bit about those goats in the back?

- Yeah, so we have been doing patch burn grazing research here at OSU since 1999.

And that was all done with livestock that were just cattle.

We didn't have any other species mixed in, but more recently we decided to add goats to some of our cattle pastures.

And one of the reasons that we did that was because we have so many re sprouting Woody species in Oklahoma.

One of the things that is happening kind of across the Great Plains, but even to a greater extent here in Oklahoma and Texas is that woody plants are starting to take over and create woodlands where there used to be prairies.

And so one way to help suppress that is using prescribed fire.

And it's really, really effective for some of our non re sprouting species like eastern red cedar, but many of our woody species will grow back after fire.

They aren't permanently killed by it.

And so when we pair that with goats, we can get a greater level of control.

- [Interviewer] So can you tell us a few of those different woody species that the goats in particular are finding?

- Yeah!

So we are looking at some woody species in specifically in this pasture.

And so some of those would be blackberry, sumac.

We have a couple of species of sumac that we're tracking and then sericea lespedeza.

Sericea lespedeza of course is a non-native plant, it's extremely invasive across many states, but especially here in central and eastern Oklahoma and goats can handle the tannins that plant creates that some other livestock species can't.

- [Interviewer] Okay so they actually don't really notice the bad flavor and tell us a little bit, why is it those species have bad flavor over some of our grasses and things like that?

- Yeah, it's interesting.

So our grasses, they handle grazing by just regrowing lots and lots of new blades and tillers, but our broadleaf plants, they don't do that.

They chemically defend themselves.

So they have different compounds in them that make them unpalatable to many livestock species, but goats have different proteins in their saliva.

They have differences in their liver and their kidneys where they can handle greater quantities, especially of tannins, which is what's in sericea.

And so they can handle those plants and they know it doesn't limit their consumption of those plants as much.

- [Interviewer] So tell us a little bit about mixing that with the burning.

Obviously it makes it a softer tissue for them and more palatable, but are you able to control their kind of grazing habit or would they still go graze the woody stuff as well?

- [Laura] Yeah, so that's interesting we're tracking, where they're grazing.

We have GPS collars on goats and we have GPS collars on cattle in this pasture as well.

- We know that the cattle are very attracted to recently burned patches, but there's no current data or no data at all on what goats do in response to this patch when grazing.

And so, one of the benefits of the fire is that we're starting those plants over from scratch.

They're re sprouting from the base.

Goats can reach all of the new growth and they use it heavily, but we don't know if they are attracted to the burn as the cattle are.

So we're checking that to see what happens.

So far what we're seeing is that they're attracted to the most recent burn and the burn that was done previous.

So there's a burn every six months in these pastures.

- Okay.

- And so they're not as focally attracted to the most recent burn, but they're working on the burns for sure.

- Okay, excellent.

- Yup.

- So you talk about the reach of the goats.

You know, a lot of times you'll see goats that are sort of look like they're climbing trees almost, but not quite.

But there's also the reach as far as into a bushy overgrown area.

Tell us a little bit about that and how fire plays into that as well.

- So, one thing that happens is you can get these mots are really thick clumps of shrubs.

And so we get those with sumac.

We get those with blackberry, for sure.

And in the middle of those mots, even when we're using prescribed fire, the fire can't get in there 'cause there's not enough fine fuel.

There's not enough grass to carry the fire in there.

And so you'll get these other species that grew up in the middle that we don't necessarily want in the pasture.

And when you use goats plus fire what we're hoping will happen as the goats use the outside that's been burned of that mot and keeps those plants suppressed that then we get a lot of grass growing in there and we can bring the fire further into those areas.

- Okay.

Well, and tell us a little bit...

I know you've got your GoPro you've put on the horns of one of your goats and tell us a little bit about what you've seen on that GoPro.

- Yeah, so we've put Go Pro's on a couple of times to track what the goats are eating.

And one of the things that we did on their first GoPro was just identify all the different species.

And so they were eating quite a bit of ragweed.

They were eating a lot of wood sorrel, which is this little tiny legume plant that grows all over in the understory.

And then the other plant that we were really excited to see them eat was sericea lespedeza.

And actually in two Go Pros we've tracked they have been eating sericea lespedeza to a pretty high extent.

And so we're excited by that.

We're looking at the vegetation and we're measuring what's happening within our pastures.

And we're hopeful that this will be a way to help control this plant and allow us to do that without using any herbicide.

- And this is part of a grant.

How long is this research gonna continue?

- Yeah, so we, this is a part of a five-year grant and we're in year two of the research.

So we've got a couple more years to go, but we definitely plan to continue with our goat research, you know, into the future.

These goats have been really impressing as this far as you know, the economics of including goats into an existing cattle herd.

And so we're excited to continue watching how this works.

- Dr. Goodman, thank you so much for sharing your research.

And it's really interesting to find out this value added product that you're getting to control your invasive species out here.

- Yeah, thank you.

(instrumental country music) - Today, I'm going to make a cupboard coffee cake.

Now, if you may figure from the title there we're going to try to use things that you normally have around the house, either in the cupboard, as the title would imply or refrigerator freezer.

So I'm not sticking to just things that are storable at room temperature.

First thing I'm going to make a topping.

Now, one of the things that I like about this particular recipe is it's fairly flexible.

And I'll try and point out as we go through what things you can sub and when you can sub them.

I've got a half a cup of brown sugar.

This could be light brown, dark brown, but it does need to be brown in order to give you the flavors that you want.

I've also got a fourth of a cup of melted butter, or margarine, or a light margarine.

You could even use oil if that's what you had.

So you've got, again, a lot of flexibility.

Anytime you sub an ingredient it's going to give you a different taste.

That doesn't mean it's not going to work.

I also have a fourth of a cup of either old fashioned oats or in this case I'm using pecans, but either one will work.

They'll give you that crunch that's often nice when you have a topping, I'm also gonna add a fourth of a cup of all-purpose flour and then a teaspoon of some kind of spice that's associated with sweetness.

So I've got a teaspoon of cinnamon, but if you can't go out and get to the store 'cause of a snow storm or a outbreak of tornadoes, or whatever this is going to work just fine.

So a teaspoon of cinnamon or a combination of something like cardamon, or nutmeg, or allspice anything that we normally associate with something sweet.

And then last thing is going in here is a half a teaspoon of salt.

Now, I'm going to take a spatula.

- Of your choice.

And I'm just gonna mush these around and try and get them to combine to the point where they are pretty much all in one piece, then we're gonna set it aside.

The goal here is to make it in big chunks.

We don't want it small chunks.

So, if yours is not coming together like this, try adding a little bit more of the oil, or fat, whichever variety you use.

And this one looks like it's good to go.

We can come back and pick that one up later.

Now, the next step on this is to blend some flour, or excuse me, some granulated sugar with some margarine.

So, let's go ahead and get that started.

Again, this could be any kind of margarine or butter that you have.

It could also be an oil.

Could be at room temperature.

It's not critical that it be at room temperature, however, I'm using a stand mixer, you could use a handheld mixer to do this as well.

But what we have found, or what research has found, not who we as in me, is that when you actually start using the mixer, the temperature of the ingredients is less critical because they're gonna heat up.

So I've put, let me see how much, we've got a one and, 1/2 a cup of granulated sugar, and 1/2 a cup of butter or some kind of fat in there.

And we're gonna bring those in the mixer and let them go and cream for one to two minutes.

Now that we have the butter and the sugar creamed together, you could do this while that was happening, but I didn't want to have to talk over it.

So, I've got 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, and then a teaspoon of baking powder, 1/4 of a teaspoon of baking soda, because we're gonna have some acid in here we need some extra reactive, and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt.

And I'm just gonna whisk those together.

Make sure they're well blended so that we get the baking, the rising ingredients throughout as much as possible.

When I was young, we always said to sift, but somewhere along the line life became a little bit easier, and now we just have to stir well.

Okay, this is gonna go into our mixture in just a minute.

What I wanna do at this point is add two eggs to this mixture over here.

I'm gonna drop them in one at a time.

It's not critical that they be absolutely one at a time, but you do wanna take care that you've cracked them into a different bowl rather than crack them into the bowl that you're mixing just in case you find out that one of the eggs is bad, or you find out that you're not as good at cracking eggs as you'd hoped you were, and you get some shell in there.

So once those are fairly well blended, you're gonna slide the other one in.

And when those are mixed together, we're gonna take the dry ingredients that we've gotten mixed together and add that, 1/2 of it at a time.

And when that's mixed in, we're gonna take three, 2/3 of a cup of some sort of a dairy product.

I'm using sour cream.

You could use milk that you have soured.

You could use buttermilk.

So, you have a lot of options on there.

And I've added two teaspoons of vanilla to that.

I'm just going to stir it together a little bit.

It really doesn't have to be blended well because it's gonna get mixed in as things go.

I just don't wanna be too sloppy when I'm moving it from one place to another.

Now, always when you're adding a dry ingredient like flour, because we don't want it everywhere, I'm gonna turn the mixer off while I do this.

If you're really good at it, you can leave the mixer on low.

I've been known to have some experiences.

So, like that one where I turned it on too quickly.

So, just get that blended in.

When that's in, we're gonna add all of the liquid ingredient that we made, which in this case was sour cream and vanilla.

We're gonna blend that in.

Then the rest of the dry ingredients are gonna go in.

I'll see if I can turn the mixer on a little bit more slowly to begin with this time.

And get that blended in so that it's all turned into one batter instead of a mix of things.

I'm gonna scrape down the sides just a little bit because I wanna make sure that we have all of the flour in and not just on the outside of the bowl, because it will come into the mix as we're transferring it into our baking pan and then we're going to have a dry spots in the mixture later.

So, blend that again real quick.

Okay.

That's it for that.

Now, normally I would clean off the batter as well as, or the beater as well as possible.

Today we'll leave it a little bit more sloppy and move forward just so we can not have you watching me do something that's not tremendously interesting.

And I have an eight inch square pan.

You can use a nine inch square pan.

You can either butter it, put margarine on it to grease it, or you can spray it with a non-stick spray.

If you use a plain non-stick spray, or you use any of those things I've mentioned before, then it's a good idea to take a little bit of flour and shake it in the pan and then shake out the extra just so you get that extr little bit of protection there.

And have that pan ready.

The oven's also preheated at 350 degrees.

I've got a 1/2 cup of fruit.

Today I'm using frozen blueberries.

If you're using frozen anything, let it thaw before you add it because it's gonna take longer for the batter around that frozen part to cook in a baked product.

You could use fresh blueberries, blackberries.

You can cut up apples smally.

You could grate fruit and put that in.

But it's about 1/2 a cup of either canned, frozen and thawed.

- Oh, well, you could use raisins, fresh.

So the choices are wide open here.

And then I'm also gonna add just a little bit of, I think it's about a half a teaspoon of some kind of a citrus zest.

I'm using lemon.

If you had limes, if you had oranges, it's again, it's a cupboard dish.

So whatever you have happen to have around your kitchen is the one that you should use.

It's not something where you need to rush out to a store.

It's a one...

It's a make do kind of thing.

Make it work type of recipe.

Now with the frozen ones, when they're thawed with blueberries, you'll see a little bit of bleeding around it.

If people are hungry enough, my feeling is if it tastes good, it's gonna be fine.

This is not going to be an entry into the fair and I'm not gonna be judged by Paul Hollywood.

So we'll hope for the best here.

All right, transfer it into your baking dish that you've prepared.

Try and spread it out so that the blueberries are as well dispersed as possible and also that you get all the batter out of the pan.

And remember, as far as food safety is concerned, this is not an instance where you get to lick the dish, because we do have raw eggs in here and we have raw flour, both of which can cause foodborne illness.

So, I'm afraid that licking the baking powder dishes gone by the wayside of the Tyrannosaurus Rex in our lives.

So, spread that out.

And now you go back for your topping.

Once you get that spread out fairly well, let me get the last of that in there.

Notice that it's a fairly thick batter.

And then we're gonna go back to our topping.

My favorite way to do this as long as you've got clean hands, is with fingers.

You can use spoons.

Make sure that your hands are clean no matter which method you're using.

The 20 seconds of washing.

Once you get that dispersed over the top and it's gonna go in the oven.

It's gonna stay in the oven depending on your oven, because they're all calibrated a little bit differently and whatnot, but it'll be somewhere between 45 and 55 minutes.

And you'll know it's done when you stick a toothpick in the center and it comes out clean.

It is a cupboard coffee cake.

It's really good.

It takes a little bit of time.

It's got a fair number of ingredients, but it's worth the effort.

I'm Barbara Brown.

Hope you'll try it.

(gentle music) It wasn't enough to once again, be caving a garden fest.

And it is just really exciting for me to actually have people that are watching me instead of just Kevin.

You can either put the pasta back in (indistinct).

And then mix everything together with the sauce.

(indistinct) Then you need to make sure that... (gentle music) For Oklahoma gardening, I'm Barbara Brown.

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

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

- Next week on Oklahoma gardening, I share a new way to incorporate a fire ring.

We take a closer look at the fabric of our lives and then we revisit the ice storm of 2020.

(gentle music) - To find out more information about show topics as well as recipes, videos, articles, back sheets, and other resources, including a directory of local extension offices, be sure to visit our website at oklahomagardening.okstate.edu.

And we always have great information, answers to questions, photos and gardening discussion on your favorite social media as well.

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 in to our okgardeningclassics 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 Pond Pro Shops, Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society and Tulsa Garden Club.

(gentle music)