(gentle music) (graceful string music) - Welcome to "Oklahoma Gardening."

I'll introduce you to a tree that could be a sculpture in the landscape.

We visit the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library System to learn more about their garden tool program.

Dr. Shufran gives us the low down on ticks.

And then we learn about new research that's climbing in popularity.

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.

(graceful string music continues) Have two different types of flowers on one plant.

Capsaicin that gives the pepper its heat.

If you've seen these very unique trees in the landscape and are curious about what they are, they're actually called a weeping blue atlas cedar and are often seen in some front yards and landscapes for their unique form that they create.

They're definitely a sculptural piece, in essence, kind of a landscape plant that you can put out there.

Usually you'll just see one in the landscape because they are such a statement piece that you can add.

Now you can see they're well known for this blue icy blue color that you get from the needles which is a nice addition.

So not only are you getting this unique form, but you're getting the color as well.

But, really, the form is what is the statement piece because of this pendulous habit that it creates.

And because of that, it's only gonna get to be about a 15 foot height but it can reach up to about a 30 foot spread.

So you wanna be cautious about where you're planting it and how close to the house you are planting it because they can have an extensive root system.

Now they are hardy between zone six and nine.

And so they are hardy here for most of Oklahoma.

But you may want to mulch the roots during those winter months.

Also, during the summer months when we're especially experiencing drought, you might wanna also do some deep watering as well.

Now they are pretty well tolerant to most Oklahoma soils, which is nice.

But you wanna make sure that they're not in too wet of conditions 'cause that can be detrimental to these as well.

The other thing about these is when you're planting 'em, think about where and how it's going to grow as it matures.

So you can see here they have it planted by an arbor, which actually is kind of a nice support.

So you can actually train these on to supports so that you can almost create a curtain like effect as it continues to grow over.

In fact, I've seen these trained even on the handrails of bridges and stuff like that.

Because of that really kind of serpentine look, you wanna highlight those branches and allow people to view them from all angles.

Now because they are so unique, when you're at the store to purchase one, make sure you get one that kind of has that form that you're going for and maybe some of those lead branches that you can train into the situation that you're looking to place it.

Otherwise, they're a great addition to your home garden.

(gentle music) Today we are here at the Belle Isle Library, which is part of the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Library system.

And joining me is Jessica Gonzalez.

Jessica, you're kind of in charge of this new program that this system has developed.

Tell us a little bit about this gardening tool program.

- Yeah, so we're calling it Metro Grows.

- Okay.

- It's a part of our new library of things.

So when you think about the library, you think about books, technology, children's programs, really, programs for all ages, study rooms, all that sort of traditional stuff, which is really the foundational piece of the library system.

But we wanted to think about new ways to support the sharing economy, support the city's sustainability efforts, and came up with a gardening tool lending program.

- Yeah!

So you worked with several partners, right?

- Yes.

- To get this established.

Tell us a little bit about who all you worked with.

- Yeah, so we, so this whole program, I should say, is possible because of a grant through the Oklahoma Department of Libraries.

And we were able to work with the county extension, CommonWealth Farms, Lillian Timber Farms, Black Soil Urban Farms, and a variety of other partners to help us select our tools and get our programming that's associated with the tools off the ground.

- So it's important that you really worked with farmers to know which tools are the most important for farmers and gardeners to utilize.

And we've got quite a selection here.

Can you kinda walk me through some of these?

- Sure.

- Got the broad fork, it looks like.

- Yeah, we have the more kind of expensive, heavy duty tools like the broad fork, spades, shovels, loppers.

- Trowels.

- A Dutch garden hole, a Dutch garden hoe.

- Oh, yeah.

Which is like a scuffle hoe.

So you can kinda just go...

But I like the handle on this one.

- [Jessica] Yeah, it's great so you don't have to lean over.

We have then a hand tool set which comes with the trug bucket.

- [Speaker] A kneeling pad and the various hand tools.

- Right, and so, you know, something like this, this can be about $250, right?

And you don't use it every day.

- Right.

So a great thing about this, so not only are we lowering the barrier to accessibility for people, because garden tools can be super expensive, we're also providing a try before you buy situation.

So, you know, you might wanna invest in a garden tool but wanna use it before you buy it.

So you can check out a tool here and do just that, or something like a broad fork you might only use once a growing season.

So you can come here and check it out and avoid that $200 plus cost.

- And I can tell you about the high quality stuff just by lifting the shovel, you know, it's not gonna break just by digging in our sometimes tough Oklahoma soil.

So that's pretty nice 'cause I'm sure it's getting a lot of wear and tear.

So does every library, tell us how many libraries have these tools available, and there's multiple sets, right?

- So we have 19 locations system-wide, but at this time, only eight are lending out the tools, and we hope to grow the program if we get good community feedback.

So if you do come check out a tool, please let us know if you enjoyed using it.

But currently, yeah, eight locations have the tools available and they check out just like a book or any other item you would check out.

- You need a library card, right?

- Yes.

- You have a library card, but then it's on there, for you just to check out.

And you have it for, how long do you have?

- So three weeks.

- Because sometimes I think I'll do that today and then it rains.

So you might not be able to do whatever gardening task that day.

What if something goes wrong with these tools?

If I have this at home and I break it and then I feel, you know, is it like a, you break it, you buy it sort of situation.

- So it just depends.

We know that tools take wear and tear.

So if the tool breaks for some reason, bring it to us, there's not going to be a charge.

But if you do lose it or don't bring it back, then you will be charged.

So again, we know that things, you know, they're garden tools and they're gonna break, so there's no stress associated with that.

- All right.

And you're looking for volunteers to sharpen some of these tools, right?

- Yeah, so we do, whenever you check out the tools, we have some tool maintenance tips that we provide.

We ask that you do bring the tools back relatively clean, but no in-depth maintenance is required.

But we do clean the tools more in-depth in house, you know, every so often.

And we're always looking for volunteers to help with that.

So sharpening the tools, helping remove rust, and doing some in-depth cleaning.

- All right, and you have some resources that go along with this, 'cause I know there's a lot of people that maybe just have a new yard and they, what is a broad fork and how do I use it?

So you have some videos and things?

- Yes, so if you go to our website, we have demo videos on how to use each tool.

And those videos were created by the community partners that I named earlier.

So local farmers who know what they're doing.

We have information on the tool maintenance, we have definitions to help you name and define each tool, and we give tips on what each tool is best used for.

We also have a variety of books in our collection that we highlight that you can check out to pair along with your tools.

And then we have classes that we're offering.

- Tell us what kind of classes you're offering as well.

- Yeah, so for the remaining part of May, we're offering water conservation and how to utilize native plants in your garden.

And then in June, we'll be moving into classes on preserving and dehydrating your produce.

And then in July we're featuring classes on composting.

And then in August, we'll wrap up kind of our summer to fall series on fall beginning gardening and seed saving.

- All right.

- Yeah, well, Jessica, I think this is a fantastic project that you guys have established here at the library, and I know a lot of people will utilize this.

Thank you so much for offering this to people.

- Thank you so much.

(uplifting music) - We're back with another "Bug of the Month", and Andrine's got a fun game for us, so I'll let you take it.

- All right, we are playing Tick Truths today.

(upbeat music) You will have the option to answer true or false to a few questions that we have about ticks.

- Okay, so you're telling me there's a lot of unknowns about ticks out there.

There are a lot of misconceptions.

- There we go.

- About this group of animals.

Nobody really likes 'em.

- Yep, let's do this.

- Okay, yes, nobody likes 'em, so it's good to know what's real and what's not.

- Absolutely, okay.

- So number one, Casey, so the fact is ticks can fly like a fly.

Ticks can fly.

- I don't see any wings on there, so I'm gonna say false on that one.

- False, all right, very good.

And number two, ticks can jump, true or false?

Ticks can jump like a grasshopper.

- Again, gonna say false, right?

- Look at their legs there.

Yeah, there's no jumping legs there.

Okay, so that's good.

Excellent.

- All right, they're getting harder.

- I know.

- Number three.

Ticks live in trees.

- I'm going to say, I know this is false, although I still feel like it could be true.

(laughing) Yes, so false is my final answer.

- Excellent.

It is a common myth that ticks can actually climb trees and then they fall out of the trees on you.

That is not true.

They can crawl up grass, but that's at the level where they want to be to hook on to a meal that's coming by.

- Okay.

- There's no meals in the trees for them.

So very good.

- So animals or different things that walk through the grass and they grab hold of them.

- [Educator] Yep, yep, they can.

- [Casey] So that's why they are often on your pant legs and you should roll up your socks over your pants.

Is that?

- Yep.

And they have heat sensors in the ends of their feet.

- Okay.

- And they just stand there like this waiting.

And then as soon as something hot comes along, they just set their hooks and go for a ride.

- Okay, all right.

Last but not least.

- Yes, and this one.

This one, very important.

You'll hear a lot about this one.

True or false, ticks die in the winter.

- [Casey] Well, I've always heard that.

- [Educator] That ticks die in the winter.

- Yeah, that it's, if we get a good heavy freeze, it's like, okay, the ticks won't be bad this year.

- It's gonna kill all the ticks and it's gonna be better.

So it must be true.

- Yes, it must be.

- It's not.

- It's not - [Educator] False.

- [Casey] Okay.

- Now, animals of all kinds can be affected in their behavior with cold weather or hot weather.

And when it's very cold, cold blooded animals don't move around quite as much.

- Okay.

- So you're not gonna maybe encounter as many, but ticks are alive all year round.

In fact, ticks can go without feeding for three years, summer, winter, the whole thing for three years without a bite of food.

- Wow, okay.

- Three whole years.

- So will they, I mean, you know Oklahoma weather.

It can be in the wintertime, it can be cold, it can be hot the next day.

- Yeah.

- Will they kind of wake back up?

- Yeah.

- That quickly back and forth?

- Yeah.

- Or will they stay dormant throughout the winter months?

- No, they are able, they're actually at the bottom where the soil meets the blades of grass.

- Okay.

- And that area gets much warmer and stays much warmer.

So when it seems cold in the air, it's much warmer down at the soil level.

And they're just below the soil, so they're out of the wind and that sort of thing.

So yeah, they're really easy at going in and out of diapause where they turn off their metabolism.

- Okay.

- They can go in and out really fast.

- Okay.

So is there anything good about ticks?

Because you are the person who loves insects.

- That's right.

- Is there anything good about ticks?

- [Educator] Well, for one, ticks are not an insect.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Educator] Ticks are arachnids like a spider.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Educator] They have eight legs.

Insects have six legs.

- Okay, so not an insect.

- Not an insect.

- But is there anything good about ticks still?

- Ticks are a part of the food chain.

And so there are animals that specifically feed on ticks both in the winter and in the summer, specifically birds and reptiles are another one that really prefer juicy, yummy ticks.

- Okay.

- Like a mosquito is food for fish and dragonflies and birds and a ton of other things.

We don't like 'em, but they do have a purpose out in nature.

- Okay, well, we just need to get some more of those predators for the ticks then.

- Wear your bug spray.

- Okay.

And one last question.

Do you know how fast they travel?

Because I feel like they can get up you pretty quickly.

- They're incredibly mobile.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

Very fast.

- Yes.

- And that's why you wanna tuck your top of your jeans into your socks.

- Okay.

- Because they'll just keep running up whatever they find.

And you want it to be the outside of your pants, not the inside of your pants.

- Right.

- Because as soon as they encounter something that they can push, they'll have their mouth parts in you.

- Okay, all right.

Thank you so much for this.

- You bet.

(giggling) (upbeat guitar music) - Today we are at the Cimarron Valley Research Station here in Perkins, Oklahoma.

And joining me is Katie Stenmark who is a PhD student here in horticulture.

And Katie, you're doing your research on hops, which we don't often think about here in Oklahoma.

Tell us a little bit about your research in this crop.

- Right, thank you, Casey.

So I am growing hops in Perkins, Oklahoma, and I've got eight different cultivars of hops currently growing.

And the main goal for this is to create a full cycle.

Number one, figure out how to grow this hop and this crop in Oklahoma.

And number two, create that circle and provide a local source of hops for craft brewers.

Because the craft beer industry here in Oklahoma is quite booming.

And what we have in Oklahoma is ample access to.

- Our wheat, oat, barley, rye, corn for making cervezas.

We've got a full picture of that grain profile, but what we lack is the main ingredient, the hops.

- Okay, so obviously this is not a typical garden that we are growing plants in.

Tell us a little bit about the infrastructure that you've established here first of all.

- Right, so you'll notice that hops grow vertically.

They grow on a trellis system.

The trellis that we have here is 16 feet high above the ground.

And it is a T-style trellis, which allows me to hang two ropes of core per plant and allows for more binds to grow onto the core.

This Trellis structure is necessary for growing hops and typically something like this is what you'll see for commercial production.

- And they get pretty tall.

Obviously.

- They do get pretty tall.

In the height of their growing season hops can actually reach 20 feet high.

And that's because they eventually start to grow about a foot a day.

- Oh, wow, so they're definitely gonna be taking off when the summer heat comes on, I assume?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- So these guys, they popped out of the ground about mid-March.

We had some early ones come out of the ground around that time, and we've got some later ones popping up earlier June.

- So they are perennial.

So this, is how many years have they been growing here now?

- This will be the second year of production.

Last year was our establishing year, and going on to the second year, we've got most of our plants still doing well.

- All right, so you've got several different cultivars, and I know you've only gone one year into this.

Any thoughts on what you're seeing so far with the cultivars?

- Right, so we do have some cultivars that are doing better than others.

And I would say that they're doing better than the others because they are more tolerant to our weather conditions here.

They are more resistant to the insects, and they were producing larger denser cones.

We had one cultivar that completely died, and just, I'll go ahead and write it off that it didn't do well here in Oklahoma.

But other than that, my other seven did well, worked to replace that one cultivar with one that is gonna hopefully do better this year.

- So generally, where do hops grow, that we're kind of pushing them into Oklahoma now.

- Most of production in the United States is occurring in the Pacific Northwest.

That's Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.

But a lot of times, you know, they're growing this crop there because it's established, and it's easy to do so, This plant is a photo period sensitive plant though.

And being in a southern state, our days are a little bit shorter.

That's probably the reason why people haven't given it a shot here in these southern states.

But what's gonna be important is that other states, like Florida, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, they are starting to grow hops in the south.

And so we wanna give it a shot here and see if we can adapt some of those plants to our conditions.

- And I think that's interesting 'cause I think, you know, a lot of times we think about plants and the climate that's affecting 'em, but here, we're really talking about the day length of those plants.

And when you mention cones, so this is what we're after, right?

- Correct.

So we have the main structure that's going to come straight from the rhizome underground.

This main vine will eventually grow as tall as it can be.

I won't say this one's as tall, but maybe it lost its top piece.

And so it started to form lateral structures.

It's on the lateral structures that we will see the flowering production of hop cones.

Hop cones are the important part of the plant that we will eventually harvest and use for beer production.

- Okay, and so, because this one kind of lost its top, it's already pushing out those lateral?

- Correct, correct.

You'll see, its cousin here doing just fine, continuing upward.

- Okay, and so really, we're wanting to get that height on 'em.

What initiates, is it the day link that initiates it to create these laterals typically and start producing these cones?

- Yes, so the photo period sensitivity is that they require short days for flowering.

So less than 15 hours, which occurs after the summer solstice on June 21st.

- Okay, all right.

- And so until around that date, they are gonna grow as much as they possibly can in a juvenile state vegetatively upwards.

The lateral structures will start to grow outward, and it's on these structures that we're looking for, for cone production.

- [Interviewer] All right, so the more vertical height, then the more potential for laterals, meaning the more cones that we can get.

- [Farmer] Absolutely.

- When will harvest happen?

And, I mean, obviously we wanna come back and check in on that.

Tell us a little bit, give us a little bit of a teaser on that.

- Right, well, we might take this one right now, but, no, I'm just kidding.

(interviewer laughs) We typically harvest, for us, last year, occurred around early August.

So throughout August, these are starting to become ripe and ready.

And that's where we are gonna start looking to take samples to see if they are at the appropriate moisture content.

- Okay.

- For harvest.

- All right.

- That's an important factor that we'll learn about later.

But around mid August to late September, we should have the hop yard harvested.

- Okay, and in the meantime, are we just letting them grow?

Is there any sort of maintenance that you have to do right now?

- Yes, so I'll be looking at fertilizing them to give one last push of juvenile growth before flowering.

I'll also be looking to prune some of these.

And so at the base, you'll see that I've got some bushy growth.

- This bushy growth, if it doesn't have its structures to grow vertically, will start to creep along the ground.

- [Casey] Okay.

- And so that's a vector for disease and insects that will have to be eliminated.

I'll do some pruning at the base, and ensure that we've got a good load on the core, meaning maybe two or three bines, hopefully.

- Okay.

- To give us the maximum amount of hop cones possible.

- All right, so if you do lose one, you still maybe have a second or third one to take off.

- Backup, right, right.

- Well, excellent, so, basically, cleaning up the...

This isn't a vineyard, what do we call this structure?

- Yeah, this is a hop yard.

- A hop yard.

Okay, okay.

- Yes, this is a hop yard, and these are bines.

- Okay.

- Not- - [Both] Vines.

- You are saying that with a B, not a V. - I'm saying it wrong, I promise.

- No, I know.

- So, bines- Tell us the difference.

- Right.

So bines, hops are in family Cannabaceae, and they grow trichomes, which are sticky, hair-like extensions that occur along the plant.

These are like anchors to structures, unlike vines, who have tendrils to help them anchor to structures, bines grow in a helix.

- [Casey] Oh, okay.

- They structure themselves with their trichomes, those sticky, hair-like extensions, and also their helix rotation helps them climb vertically.

- [Casey] Very nice.

- [Katie] Making them a bine, not a vine - Well, Katie, this is a fascinating crop, and it sounds like there might be some real potential for growers here in Oklahoma for this crop, so we appreciate the research that you're doing on this, and we'll follow up with you again after the summer solstice, if that works.

- Excellent, Casey, see you then.

- Thank you.

(inspirational orchestral music) (inspirational orchestral music continues) There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

(inspirational orchestral music) (inspirational orchestral music continues) Join us right here next week on "Oklahoma Gardening," as we see what the Mustang Library offers gardeners.

Yards, and wondering what...

I don't know what I just said.

- Oh, okay.

- Okay.

- We'll start again.

'Cause we were rolling there for a while.

- I know!

(laughing) - I forgot.

(Casey laughing) (inspirational orchestral music) - [Casey] 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 Stillwater 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.

(inspirational orchestral music)