- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today we'll show you a fun way to reinvent the salad bowl.

We visit Greenleaf Nursery to learn more about plant breeding.

I talk with Bailey to hear more about what's involved in managing a hobby greenhouse.

And finally, we have another 50th anniversary announcement you won't wanna miss.

Underwriting assistance for our program 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 and 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.

So a lot of times people start this year with high expectations.

And if you're new to gardening, I just want you to be successful regardless of what it is you're trying to grow.

One of the biggest things you're trying to grow is your confidence in being able to grow something.

So one of the easiest projects that you can start with is what I'm gonna show you here.

And it's a fun project for kids too, if you're trying to get them involved with some greens, eating greens, eating healthier, and also kind of seeing how plants grow.

This is a fun little project, so it's called a salad bowl because we are literally growing salad or lettuce in a bowl.

So you can buy a pre, a clay pot or a pot that already has holes in it, or if you wanna be a little fancier, you can go buy a bowl that actually maybe matches your decoration or your dining room set.

And then just with a diamond head drill bit, actually drill holes into it.

So one of the things for lettuce is something we want a lot of surface area, and we really don't need that much depth to it.

So you can see this is almost like a soup bowl where it's really wide and shallow.

So we're gonna fill this with our potting soil, pre-wet, your potting soil, because it might take a little bit to really get it moistened, and it's easier to do that before you actually put the seeds in there.

So we have ours already moist, and we're just gonna fill this up.

Now you wanna make sure that you don't fill it all the way level, because as you water it, you don't wanna have to worry about it overflowing.

So we're just gonna kind of pat that down a little bit and smooth that out.

You can see I left a little bit of a rim here on there.

And then just go get a seed packet.

You know they're about a dollar dollar and a half at your garden center.

This is just a mix.

So we're gonna have the kind of the red leaves and the green leaf in there.

This particular bowl here, we've got spinach started in.

So whatever kind of your greens of choice are, go ahead and get those started.

So the thing you gotta remember is lettuce seeds actually need light to germinate now.

And that kind of makes sense because the rule of thumb with seeds and the depth of plan 'em at, which is usually two and a half times the diameter of the seeds.

And so you can see lettuce seeds are very small, so we're not even really going to be measuring how deep we're really gonna just sprinkle those along the surface there.

We're not worried too much about spacing or anything like that.

And then we're just going to kind of tamp those down so that they have good contact with that soil, but we're not actually really burying them.

They're gonna have that light.

Now again, it would be best to put a grow light over 'em.

Make sure that they do receive some of that bright light in order to grow.

Make sure you're also watering them pretty regularly.

So we're just gonna keep these moist as they germinate, but they're gonna germinate in about 10 days.

So for somebody who's new or a child, you're gonna get that quick result and that quick impact.

And again, you're gonna be able to harvest these pretty soon, depending on whether you're going for microgreens or you want a fuller look, a fuller lettuce, being able to harvest these fresh, and you'll continue to get some leaves off of these as you harvest it.

So it's a fun little project.

Again, ours are fairly new.

They have a little while to grow still, but soon we'll all be eating fresh lettuce.

So enjoy this project this season.

- We wanted to bring you by Greenleaf Nursery.

Welcome to Greenleaf Nursery.

Today we hosted a series of growers and breeders from around the country, as well as customers coming in to talk and learn about the newest varieties that are being released by breeders and introduced through the Garden Debut and Bloom and Easy Programs and grown by Greenleaf Nursery and many of the affiliates associated with Bloom and Easy and Garden Debut.

Garden Debut is a program managed by Greenleaf Nursery.

And what it consists of is a network of growers who grow some of the best plants available on the marketplace right now.

And what we try to focus on is new and improved varieties that will perform well in the landscape so that people can plant them and forget about them and not worry about having to constantly maintain the plants.

Part of the selection process for garden debut plants, we do trial them in different locations.

We have trial gardens around the country along with cooperators.

So when we do have new varieties of plant material, we send them out, have them grown under the grow typical conditions for those areas.

And that allows us to find out where these plants will thrive and where we can really promote them as good plants for the landscape and for the customers overall.

- We got some of the breeders who are spread around the country all in one place showing their wares.

Some of you just heard from Carl Whitcomb, who's one of the greats.

And Carl and I are both in octogenarians now.

Carl's 85 and I'm 80.

And Carl and I talk frequently about new plants, why they're important.

And we still believe in the future.

If you're a plant breeder, you, you sort of base your future experiences on the past and you really never live in the present.

You're always looking to the future.

And somebody could ask the question, why do plants?

Well, new plants offer many things.

Number one, customers want new, otherwise we wouldn't have new car.

Car models will still be driving around in a pinto from about 1960 to 69 or whatever.

New plants add value added to a nursery.

You can always command.

They always command a premium.

The market today is different than it was 30 years ago, 40 years ago.

When I worked in nurseries, it used to be all green meatballs, pretty much anything green sold.

But who cared?

And the market's evolved, and I think the customer has evolved to where they want.

Color pollinators have been very, very important in the last, I'd say, five to 10 years.

If it doesn't have pollinator value, is it really worth even throwing out there?

Because that'll, that'll, that'll sell it.

They want that.

It is deer proof.

The time from breeding the plant to actually getting the market could be somewhere between, especially a woody plant, can be somewhere between five and 10 years.

And you have to have belief in the future.

You have to have patience.

And if you're a private breeding company, our company is called Premier Introductions Incorporated, you better have private money in your pocket because nobody's, we live off royalties.

If this plant goes to market or they big I just showed you, goes to market, there'll be a royalty attached to 50 cents to a dollar.

And our great hope is that the plant will sell more than five.

It might sell 50,000 or a hundred thousand.

And that's how we fund our operations by royalties.

But that stream is way down the road from when you initiate any kind of breeding project.

- I'm Mike Lindsey with Scapes Inc. Design Build landscape company.

And stand here with a tree that I found many, many years ago and was able to graft and patent this tree.

And it's Lindsey Skyward bald Cyprus.

It goes straight up non aggressive root system, no seed.

So it's a very clean tree and they stay naturally upright, just like you see here.

The difference in this cypress and most Cyrus is it grows slender and tall.

It's just a really clean tree for avenues.

Sometimes we'll do very groupings of these with boulders around them in a natural setting.

There's a lot of different uses.

- We became interested in red buds and Cindy found the rising Sun red bud.

And that kind of put us on a breeding adventure of new plants.

So we came up with a lot of red buds since then.

And the special one is hearts are fire.

It's got red leaves all spring and summer.

We but about 40,000 red buds a year and a lot of new red buds coming out in the future.

A lot of dwarf df weeping ones, different varieties.

- Here you see some varieties of us that are in Blooming Easy from Van Bell Canada.

This one is a really special one.

The thing is that this variety, as you can see it keeps on making flowers, is no variety that does it like this.

Every time they make new birds in our country, it's till the end of October, it starts to make new flowers with all the varieties.

You don't see that they might have a flower still, but they certainly make new flowers.

Now this is really unique.

This is the Hydrangea foia Toy Soldier.

Toy soldier.

The the least turn.

Beautiful Tourette in autumn.

You cannot see that now yet.

It's browsing very well for the Reif foia.

Usually reif folia are getting a little bit long and falling over.

This is branching very well and it's also a variety.

I like it actually.

There are so many reif fo of course it's has beautiful flowers as all s have.

But it's a really nice compact variety with a nice color in autumn and flowering freely.

This is the Diervilla Firefly.

The Diervilla Firefly.

As you can see, still a little bit, but it's a little bit going towards its autumn, so it gets a little bit less.

But the, the color of the shoots are nice, getting towards the red.

And the rest is kind of yellow.

It has all kind of colors.

And especially in spring, the colors are even more amazing In disk kind of species we also have other varieties coming with other kinds of leaves.

Very deep red and also brownish.

And so there will be more in this series of these.

- Orange bark, special river birch was created from seed I collected near Oilton, Oklahoma, the western most native river birch in the country.

What I was interested in was drought tolerance, toughness.

That was in the spring of 1987.

This one came to realization in 19 or 2020.

So it took all those years, multiple generations, plant seeds, save the best ones, plant seeds, and do that over and over and over to get to that particular point.

But in the late summer when the, when the top is producing more energy and the top isn't growing, the energy moves down the stem and the bark expands.

When that bark expands, that's when you get the bright bark color.

And this one, it's orange and it stays orange all fall and winter by February.

It's dull some, but it, it gives you a tremendous show of orange tough drought tolerant.

It's the most drought tolerant birch of, of the many that I work with.

That's a plus dense foliage.

So you don't really see the stem much during the growing season, but when the leaves drop, that's when the party arrives.

But fun tree, it is gonna get big.

It'll get 30, 40 feet.

Typical river birch.

But yeah, it's, it's what I'm excited about.

Yeah, - So we've been talking to you about our hobby greenhouse - In late winter, early spring.

We're all getting a little antsy to get back out in the garden.

And a lot of times we start thinking about transplants and wanting to get those plants started earlier.

Often gardeners talk about getting a hobby greenhouse and what all is involved in that process.

And I have to admit, on a snowy day in the winter, there's no better place to be in than in a hobby greenhouse where it's nice and warm.

We're gonna go in and talk with Bailey Singleton about what it took to get this hobby greenhouse going.

Hey Bailey.

Hey Casey.

It is much warmer in here.

It is.

There's snow out there.

It's really cold.

So I know that I always find you out here in the wintertime.

Yep.

So like your second office, tell me a little bit about what you've done to kind of get this greenhouse online for us.

- So one of the first things that I had to do was make sure that it could hold temperature.

And so there was a lot of gaps at the very bottom of the greenhouse because it was a previously used greenhouse.

We rebuilt it here.

So I went through with spray foam and filled in all of the gaps underneath.

That way whenever there's snow outside, you can see at the bottom of the greenhouse, you can see the snow in the bed outside, but it's warm in here.

Right, - Right.

So we haven't sealed up.

Now let's talk temperature.

Obviously that's the most, the biggest priority.

- Yes.

- Heat in the winter time for sure.

And cooling in the summertime.

- Yeah.

So I wanted to get a good space heater.

And so this is an oil filled radiator heater.

So it's righted for this, about this square footage of this room.

And so it keeps it really warm.

It has its own thermostat.

So it'll turn off if it's above the temperature that it's set to.

So it comes on, it does its thing.

If you tip it over, it turns off automatically like a good space heater would do.

So you don't have to worry about anything bad happening that way.

- I think that's one of the concerns is like, okay, I'm not going to have this in my space all the time.

I'm going to leave, I want to stay on.

- Yes.

So I've not had any issues with it.

And I've done a lot of tests before putting plants in here and just being able to maintain that temperature.

- Yeah.

- However, whenever it gets really sunny, even on these cold winter days, like it was 30 degrees yesterday, really sunny, it got really warm in here.

And so you don't wanna open up the door and let all of the hot air out.

So this vent that I installed, I got it online, it's also rated for about this size room.

Okay.

So people put it in their attics, in their garages, whatever.

It has its own thermostat as well.

So whenever it gets above, I think I have a set of 85 degrees right now.

It'll kick on and try to kick some of that air out.

- Okay.

Heat rises.

So it's headed out that - Way.

And so that's why I put it so high up.

I put it, it's high up on the greenhouse as I could, which is another reason why I chose the specific door for this greenhouse.

- Okay.

'cause the door we got was kind of broken and didn't work really - Well.

So yeah, you couldn't open the screen.

But with this door, you can pull down the screen from the top, so it's also able to pull that air.

So whenever the vent kicks on, I can crack the window and it pulls air from the top.

Okay.

So all that hot air can just go straight outside.

- And I think that's one of the things you have to consider when you're building a greenhouse or or controlling managing a greenhouse is the air flow.

Yeah.

And you don't want necessarily the air that's coming in to go immediately out or the hot air to go immediately out.

So you gotta heat it.

What about when we wanna cool it off?

- So I have this little air conditioner in here.

It doesn't work the greatest, but it does a little bit.

- Okay.

- So we're not growing plants in here in the summertime, so it's gonna be really hard to keep the temperature down, but it does a little bit and it will blow cool air.

- It's really surprising.

Like again, it is below freezing outside.

You come in here, I need to take my jacket off.

I think it's - About 70 degrees.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

You don't realize how much just that solar effect of the greenhouse effect really, really does compensate for that temperature.

Yes, for - Sure.

And so on the days, whenever it is super warm, I have these cool little thermometers that I keep in here.

- Okay.

- And so these connect to my phone via an app and it shows me the highs and the lows for whatever on the temperature is.

So if I leave work yesterday and I can come in today, it'll show me how low the greenhouse actually got.

And so I can put parameters on there to alert me whenever the temperatures are above a certain degree or below.

But this one works for Bluetooth just as the base model.

But there are other components you can buy that connect it to your wifi and it'll alert you no matter where you're at.

- Okay.

Alright.

So, and you know if this was in your backyard right?

That Bluetooth might option might work for you?

We don't necessarily live here.

- Yeah.

- And so when you come back, it reconnects via Bluetooth?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Very good.

So one other thing I know you guys do during the summer to kind of help moderate that greenhouse effect is the shade cloth.

- Yeah.

So later in the spring, before we can actually put all the plants outside, we'll put a shade cloth on the outside.

And so the sun will be beating in here and it'll get well over a hundred degrees easily even without the heater on, just with the sun.

So that shade cloth helps block some of it.

I think the one that we use is about a 50% shade.

So it still allows light to come through, but it helps cool the greenhouse dramatically.

- All right.

And then when it does get too hot, we feel - It out.

We get out of here.

- Yeah.

And, and we, and that's honestly a a, a functional part of having a greenhouse.

Yes.

Because it's, we sterilize it that way.

Right?

- Yes.

It gets really hot in here during the summertime when it's 115 outside, it's easily 150 inside the greenhouse.

Okay.

Even without the shade cloth or anything.

- Of course you wanna be mindful of any electrical components that you - Yes.

Or leaving anything in here, it'll fade really bad.

- Okay.

Or melt or melts.

It's happen.

So also within this space, I mean this is a fairly small space.

What is the dimensions on this?

- It's a 12 by nine.

- Okay.

But it's nice to be able to come in here and actually see the space and feel it and see whether it's big enough for you.

Yes.

As a a home gardener and stuff.

Yes.

But to utilize that space functionally.

Well, we have microclimates - For sure.

- But you're also trying to have growing space, but yet you have storage space.

Let's talk about those two things.

- Yes.

So I have these plastic benches.

If you go on Pinterest and you look at any of the ideas for hobby greenhouses or backyard greenhouses, they're all really cute.

And they have all of these wooden components, but that's not necessarily the most functional for what we're doing.

So these are plastic wood rots.

Yes.

Wood rots.

And so that means you're gonna have to replace that every year-ish or whatever.

And so we are able to use these plastic ones so that way we can water and not have to worry about any diseases being trapped in that, or just the wood breaking on us from all of the moisture from watering the plants.

- Okay.

- And so we've incorporated the wood design a couple other ways.

So I have this little potting bench over here that it has a wood top, but it's sealed so I don't have to worry about it rotting.

And so it's about the perfect height to be able to pot up little plants and then put them back on the benches.

- And you also have, I think it's like a baker's rack basically, but Yeah.

So it's a coated metal.

- Yes.

It is a coated metal.

So this one fit the space perfectly, and so it's wide enough and long enough for the heat mat that we already had.

And so I have lights hung from them and I have some little seedlings already started.

But whenever I go to water those, because it is also storage, I have stuff underneath.

So I have to pull the seedlings off, water, it, let the water quit draining, and then I can put it back on the bench.

- Okay.

Okay.

And something to be mindful, like anytime you add stuff on there, you're blocking that light that's coming through.

Yes.

On the stuff below it.

So yes.

So again, let's talk about microclimate.

So ours, our greenhouse, like most greenhouses in Oklahoma are on a north south direction.

So that then means we have east and west to that, right?

Yes.

So I've noticed that you've got your cool season on one side and more of your warm plants on the other side.

That is very intentional.

- Okay.

So the cord for the heater is only so long, so I have it as middle of the room as I can, but it favors the west side.

And so I have my warm season plants over there.

So whenever the sun comes through on the west, it gets all of that extra sun, and then it has that heat from that side, and then the heater's also closer.

Okay.

So those plants are doing better on that side.

Over here I have the cool season plants just because it's basically only getting warmth from that eastern sun, and then it's a little further away from the heater.

- Okay.

- I do have a couple test plants in here that I like to use.

So I - Have Those are your canaries.

- Yeah.

So this is the pathos.

You can see it got burnt the other day.

I had it hanging on the north wall - Because we got down to 17 or something.

- Yeah.

So it got really cold the other day.

Not in here.

Not in the greenhouse.

Outside of the greenhouse.

And so this particular branch, or this leaf was touching the wall of the north side of the greenhouse, and so it got burnt.

And so I don't think there's any coming back from that one.

- You know?

And that's something to be mindful of is again, any of that plant tissue that's actually touching the plastic, the plastic can be cold itself, even though the ambient air might be warm.

Yes.

And that's something we always tell people out in the garden when they're wanting to protect their plants.

Like don't actually put the plastic right on the plant because Yes.

You know, you wanna lift it up so that you're creating that pocket of air as insulation.

Otherwise that plastic can burn plants too.

Yes.

So, all right.

Well otherwise it looks like your plant's doing fine.

- Yep.

It's not gotten too cold to kill it or the burn that I have in here.

So I think it's holding its temperature pretty well.

- So all in all, I mean, the idea, a lot of people think, oh, I just wish I had a little place to play.

But there is some maintenance and work that's involved in having a hobby greenhouse.

Well, Bailey, thank you so much.

This is great information, and it looks like you're off to a good start already.

Yes.

- Thank you.

- So one of the big questions we get is what have you been working on during the winter?

Well, I'm so excited because 2025 is our 50th anniversary.

This last winter we've been working on a big project, and that is an Oklahoma gardening documentary titled Rooted in Oklahoma, celebrating 50 years of Oklahoma gardening.

Over the past year, we've been interviewing so many people that have been a part of this show's history, as well as digging through the classic videos and the archives to bring to you the story of Oklahoma gardening.

It's fascinating how this show started in 1975 by filming live down at OETA to what it is today.

Join us right here on OETA Thursday, March 27th at 7:00 PM for Rooted in Oklahoma.

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

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

For the next three weeks, OETA will be conducting fundraising, but we'll be right back here with another great episode of Oklahoma Gardening on March 22nd.

- Okay.

So with that and it, okay, - That was all recorded.

Just FYI.

- Okay.

Ready - Behind the scenes rambling 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.