Welcome back to Oklahoma Gardening.

Our winter is starting to shift a little bit and things are starting to bloom.

As we make that transition, there still might be some fluctuating temperatures, so today we're going to show you how you can protect your cool season crops.

We're also going to be talking about adding mulch in the garden, as well as the Princeton elm tree.

We'll talk about birds that are migrating in and out of Oklahoma during this time, and Christy is whipping up some vegetables in the air fryer, so stay tuned.

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As we know, we live in Oklahoma, and we have some very fluctuating temperatures in the spring months, so we've got our cool season crops out.

You can see the wind's kind of taking a toll on them a little bit today, but we want to make sure that we can protect them if we get some upcoming freezes.

While cool season crops can handle into the 30s, the freezing temperatures, we want to see if we can protect those a little bit.

So today, we are going to make a low tunnel, which is essentially like a little modified hoop house that we're going to put over a raised bed here.

So that's why it's called a low tunnel.

So we've got some half-inch PVC pipe, and then also these are pipe tape or pipe straps that you can put over.

And because we have a wood frame, it's going to make it really nice to attach these.

So I've already got four of them attached on this eight-foot length.

You could have done three.

Four just kind of stabilizes it a little bit more.

The big thing when you're putting these on, you want to make sure that they are opposite each other so that when we put our PVC pipe that they do kind of align with one another.

So half-inch PVC pipe, this is a seven-foot length for what is a three-foot width here, and we're going to get about a three-foot rise on it depending on how far we push that PVC down into these straps.

So the half-inch PVC pipe works really well because it's flexible enough that it will bend, but it's also sturdy enough that, again, it's going to hold up to these temperatures.

So we're going to go ahead and just incorporate these, and it's simply a matter of sliding these into that pipe strap and sort of gently bending those a little bit.

And then again you can push those down to a depth that works best for you.

So this is just giving us the framework initially that's going to support our freeze cloth that we'll add here in a minute.

All right, now that we have our frame structure built, it's time to go ahead and add our freeze cloth over the top of it.

So we've got that here.

Also we've got some clamps, and having an extra pair of hands definitely helps as well on these windy days.

So we're going to just stretch this out a little bit here.

And this is just some old freeze cloth that we've actually kept from year to year, so it's nice to kind of fold this up and have it just in case you need it from season to season.

So you want to just make sure you're pulling it down, and this might take a little bit of working and maneuvering, so we're going to go ahead and clamp some of these just to get it in place initially.

You can also use binder clips essentially.

Those work just as well.

So on the end, you can either cut it to fit exactly, or you can just kind of wrap it up, sort of like messing with a fitted sheet a little bit.

Wrap it up a little bit, and then just clip it to secure it on the ends, and kind of tuck it in that way.

All right, and you can see we've got it secured on here now.

It might take a little manipulation to get it that way, especially if it's windy, but really this low tunnel is just to help prevent it from those frost nights, those heavy freezing nights that might come in, and prevent that frost from settling on your plants.

It's very adaptable.

Also, you can use it later on in the season to help prevent pests from getting on your plants as well, or as a windbreak.

So it is not to necessarily make that greenhouse effect because we're not putting plastic on it.

So you can easily remove all of this material and just have your raised bed, but it's an easy way to add a low tunnel to your raised bed.

We all know the benefits of mulch in the garden, and today we are at Gathering Place over here in Tulsa, and joining me is Kellen Lee, who is tasked with the massive job of putting mulch all over this park.

Tell me a little bit about how big of a job that is.

Yeah, so Gathering Place right now is 66 acres, and we have a lot of plant beds in that space.

So it takes a lot of effort, and so we try to be very efficient and very safe in those practices.

Yeah, and the park is about seven years old, so still fairly new landscape that we're dealing with, right?

Which means more surface area exposed.

Correct.

Whenever we first started the park, we started with putting around nine semi-loads in the park, and there each semi is around 115 cubic yards.

Wow.

So right now with some of our growth, we're actually down to six last year, and we're hoping to get by with just five semis this year.

Okay, and we're not just talking about little tree wells on flat areas either.

Let's talk a little bit about the topography and also the physical barriers you have to deal with.

Yeah, so here at the park, we have a lot of slopes here at the park.

It's one of the reasons kids love it, but at the same time, we have railings in the park, and those railings, we have to step over, and we have a few different ones of those.

So to get mulch into plant beds over railings can be a lot of work.

So obviously with these barriers, you're not just growing wheelbarrows up the hills, right?

No, no, we definitely can't do that.

We rent a mulch machine that is like, if you can imagine a fire truck with water coming out the end, but with mulch coming out the end.

So what it is, is we have a hopper.

We take the mulch from the back of the truck, load it into the hopper, and the hopper shoots it out the fire hose at the end.

Our crew to run the mulch blower takes around five to six people at the max.

Even in some areas could take a little bit less.

The amount of time that they can move through an area is a lot quicker.

They can set up, they move through in about an hour in one area.

They can reach up to 150 feet away from the actual hopper, which really helps us get into some of those tight spots that we couldn't bring mulch to before.

And do you try to focus it all on this time of season, late winter, early spring, or do you do this throughout the season?

Yeah, we actually do it just for about four weeks during the end of January, the beginning of February.

We do it every year.

We call it mulch season for us.

The team loves the mulch blower, and they love it because of the efficiencies it saves, the back labor it saves, just the amount of physical labor that it saves.

They really like it.

They get it done, and then we can actually spend our spring and our summer doing plant health care that we really want to be doing.

Well, and I know you guys, obviously a lot of this mulch is being brought in, but you take advantage of the mulch that nature provides you with all of these trees as well.

Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, so we bring in the hardwood pine mulch, and that's what we're putting out of the mulch blower, but at the same time, we have over 6,000 trees here that produce leaf litter for us.

We take some of that leaf litter, and we let some of it just lie where it is.

Some of it we shred up and then leave where it lies to create a little bit more of a mulch matted area for us.

Then we have pine needles that we always make sure to save and keep in place, and then we also have leaves that from pathways we've had to remove, and those leaves go into our compost pile that get brought back out for later use.

Okay, well it sounds like you're being very efficient, and you appreciate the value of mulch as well here.

Let's talk a little bit about, I mean, we mentioned this garden is growing, right, and so it sounds like the need for the mulch that you're buying has declined a little bit.

You're also incorporating a living mulch.

Tell us a little bit more of that.

Yes, so we don't want to have to put down the nine truckloads like we said, so every year our goal is to reduce that number.

With that, we plant a lot of what we call living mulch, so ground cover.

It might be vinca or liriope.

We have a lot of ajuga in the park, but we're constantly looking for great ground covers that will take up the space of mulch that we don't have to then put that mulch down.

Okay, and as you go through the season, mulch doesn't always stay where it needs to stay.

Can you tell me a little bit about some of your challenges with our topography here?

Yeah, so like we mentioned, the slopes are sometimes go up twice as they go out once, so we call it throwing mulch.

So in the summertime, instead of mulching our beds, we throw our mulch from the bottom of the hills back up to the top, and that helps us keep it redistributed, but we're not having to add more.

We're not adding extra compost to the bottom of the slopes.

We're not changing the topography too much by making sure we're throwing the mulch back up.

Right, and that just goes back into that further plant care of making sure you're not getting any of them buried down at the bottom.

Exactly.

Even after mulch season, after we've gone through with the mulch machine, we still have plant health care practices that we have to go do, and we remove the mulch from around shrub bases and tree wells and other areas.

All right, well thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

Thank you so much having me.

Hi, I'm Caitlin Gibson, University Arborist at Oklahoma State University, and today we're on the north side of Advanced Technology and Research Center, where you see six Princeton elms, and this is the perfect time of year to showcase this tree, as its typical dark green foliage has turned into a vibrant bright yellow for the fall.

This tree was first introduced in 1922 and is an improved variety of our native American elm.

It's an extremely popular tree to plant in urban settings because of its tight base shape.

It can fit in smaller spaces.

It's also extremely drought resistant, tolerant of urban settings, and has a natural resistance to the Dutch elm disease issue.

At maturity, the Princeton elm can get to be about 50 feet tall and about 30 feet wide, and keeping in mind that it is highly tolerant of a lot of conditions, along with its vibrant fall color, it's a great selection for the urban setting and can easily be found in the nursery industry.

Joining us today is Dr.

Tim O'Connell, Wildlife Ecologist with OSU, and Dr.

O'Connell, thank you for joining us.

We always love talking birds, especially.

That's what I want to talk about all the time, but it's wonderful here.

Thanks for getting me out of the office today on this beautiful spring day.

Yes, we're coming out of winter, headed into spring.

It's not like full-blown spring yet, but let's talk a little bit about the birds, because as plants are transitioning, the birds are also transitioning a little bit.

They are, yes.

We've had birds here all winter long, obviously, but that population that we saw maybe is shifting a little bit.

Let's talk about what's leaving us right now.

That's right, especially people who are feeding birds around their home.

They're noticing that there might be a little bit more activity around their bird feeders, and then there's going to be less, and that's because there are a lot of birds that overwinter with us that are now leaving, that are thinking about leaving, and that's some of these things like Harris's Sparrow, White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, so they're not going to be here for that much longer, a few weeks more.

Okay.

Yeah, and then they'll head north, and they'll nest in the summer in the boreal forests of Canada, and for Harris's Sparrow, it's even above the tree line, way up in the Arctic Circle, so it's really cool that we provide that habitat for birds in the winter.

Okay.

But of course, at the same time, that means new things are coming in.

Yes, yes.

And that's birds that might have spent the winter in as far away as, you know, south of the equator in South America.

Most of them won't go quite that far.

They might be in Central America, Southern Mexico, Columbia, you know, places like that, but they'll start filtering in as spring progresses, and the first wave of those we'll start to see in early April.

Okay, okay.

And that's great here in Oklahoma, because we get this flagship species that comes back, our Scissortail Flycatcher, which is the greatest state bird in all of the 50 states.

Okay, so Scissortail Flycatchers, Hummingbirds.

Hummingbirds will come back.

People will be excited for them coming in April, yeah.

Okay, so bluebirds are one of the popular ones.

Do they come in a little bit earlier, or are they around?

The bluebirds are a little complicated, right, so a lot of our bluebirds migrate, but we're also far enough south and mild enough in winter that we can support bluebirds usually throughout the whole winter, and they're finding little crickets and things and little bugs to eat.

They're eating some fruits, and that's what sustains them.

They're not coming to your feeders, right, but mostly what's happening with the bluebirds, the ones that aren't moving off and heading north, is they're starting to nest.

They're finding those boxes, right?

They're flying those boxes, right, so bluebirds are this weird thing in which they nest in a box in a cavity, but they can't make those cavities themselves.

They're not woodpeckers, so they have to find one that's available, and if they find it, hold on to it, right, so it really helps that we put these little boxes out for them, and this is the time of year that they're first getting started, and some of them might end up raising three broods throughout the summer.

Okay, so bluebird boxes, obviously food is important for what's leaving, too, because they're trying to kind of fatten up maybe for their travel as they migrate north.

Yeah, and that is really important at this time of year because most of the natural foods all the birds have found now, so if you've been feeding birds throughout the winter, like keep doing it until about mid-April, so if there's a cold snap, if it gets rainy and cool for a few days, that can really take a toll on them, so if you've got them sort of used to finding food at your place, keep doing that for a little bit longer.

Okay.

Yeah, that's good for them.

And then when should we put our hummingbird feeders out and other bird food for any summer birds that might be coming in?

Yeah, so probably in April, so usually about the first week of April is when their first wave of hummingbirds will be here, and you can put your nectar feeders out.

Shortly after that is when Orioles will be coming through, and some people like to offer oranges or like grape jelly.

I was gonna ask about jelly, yeah.

I've never had any luck with it.

All I attract is fruit flies, but I've seen photos, so I know it works.

Some people are doing it right, they're doing it better than I am.

Orange halves, yeah, is something that's supposed to attract.

Oh, I've never had them either.

I just end up with a bunch of rotten oranges on my trees outside, but people in other places have better luck with that.

Okay, all right.

And how far north do we see it?

Because Orioles are kind of a little less prominent, I would say, right?

Yeah, so that's, Orioles are, they're a real long-distance migrant, so they're one of those ones that's spending the winter in southern Mexico, Central America, and they're just here for those few months of the summer.

Throughout Oklahoma, or?

Widely throughout Oklahoma, but you're right, they are kind of spotty in their distribution, and they like to be around sort of tall shade trees, but usually around water.

Okay.

And here at the garden is actually a great place to find Orioles.

There's a row of sycamore trees behind us, and that always has male Orioles in springtime singing.

I think they just stop there, you know, while they're migrating and they're practicing.

Okay, and as an ornithologist, you probably ID stuff more by hearing than actually seeing them, right?

Absolutely, yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about, it is mating season for a lot of these birds, and so they're very vocal right now.

Is this a good time?

They're very vocal literally right now.

You're distracted, aren't you?

Yeah, there's a Carolina wren over there.

He's saying, teakettle, teakettle, teakettle, teakettle.

Okay, he missed his cue.

We've got Carolina chickadees behind us.

We've had eastern bluebirds singing throughout the morning while we've been here.

So this is the time that your local birds, even if they've maybe been at your feeder throughout the winter, they're also getting more vocal, and then you're detecting them more.

So it'll sound like and feel like, oh, there's birds everywhere today, and partly that's true, but partly it's the ones that have been there are more vocal now.

And it really is training your ear to hear this other kind of frequency that is out there, right?

Yes, yes, and the amazing thing that we have today is we have technology that can help people learn so much faster than I learned.

Did I ever tell you how I learned how to identify bird songs?

No, I don't.

You would go outside, hear a bird, look at it, and if you didn't see it, you'd have to try to get closer, and if you didn't see it, it'd just be, okay, I missed that one.

It was a bird I heard, but you didn't know how to ID it.

Correct.

It takes a long time, took decades to sort of build that, but now there are apps that help people.

Merlin app is the one that I really recommend people use because it just opens up a whole world to people who've been hearing these sounds their entire lives, but never connected, like, oh, that's this.

Okay.

And once you start doing that, your ability to recognize them, you know, happens almost instantly.

Okay.

Right.

It's wonderful.

Sit out on your porch with a cup of coffee, open up your Merlin app, let it run for about five minutes, and tell you what's all around you.

Okay, so it can be that simple.

I don't have to go find a lake and a forest or a, you know, prairie area, necessarily.

One of the beautiful things about birds is that they find us.

So everywhere I go, there are birds, and if you want to see something special, like you want to see a waterbird, you would go to a lake.

Okay.

But most of us are surrounded by, you know, 10 or 20 different species of birds every day.

All right.

And just tapping into that is a great way to enjoy this beautiful world that we have.

Absolutely.

Well, thank you so much for sharing this with us today.

Thanks, Casey.

Today, we're going to be making a mixture of vegetables in the air fryer, and making a mixture like this works really well if you don't have enough of any one certain vegetable.

For example, we're just going to use one yellow squash for this recipe.

And you want to cut the yellow squash so that the size is similar to the other vegetables in your mixture.

We'll also be adding some broccoli and cauliflower and carrots.

I've only got one carrot here, and I cut the sizes kind of small because carrots take a little bit longer to cook than some of our other vegetables in this mix.

And then we've got just a little bit of leftover red onion that I'm going to add.

And with this vegetable mixture, it gives it a really nice color with this different vegetables that we've got in here.

But feel free to add any other vegetables that you might have.

I would just stay away from things like tomatoes or celery or lettuce, you know, anything that's going to really wilt because that won't cook well in the air fryer.

Now, once we've got our mix in a bowl, we're going to add one to two tablespoons of olive oil, and then about a half a teaspoon of some garlic powder, and then our salt and pepper to taste, but usually about a half of a teaspoon of salt and pepper.

And then we'll just give that a little toss.

We want to make sure that that olive oil coats the vegetables so that they'll get an evenly coated.

And another option that you could, instead of adding the olive oil to the bowl, you could just use a sprayer like this oil sprayer and just spray over the top in your air fryer.

But now with most air fryers, you want to preheat the air fryer for a couple of minutes before you add it to the air fryer.

So I've already got this turned on and I've got it set to 375 degrees, but we're just going to let it preheat for just a couple of minutes.

Now that our air fryer is preheated, now we can go ahead and add our vegetables.

And you want to make sure to not overfill the air fryer.

You want the vegetables to just be in a single layer at the bottom.

If you have more vegetables, it's better to do multiple batches.

So that we've got them added.

Now we want to cook them at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes.

I'm going to set this for 13 minutes.

Now that our vegetables are done, we can go ahead and take them out of our air fryer.

And again, the amount of time you want to cook them for about 10 to 15 minutes, it really depends how crispy you want your vegetables to turn out, like how your family likes them.

But this mix is a great way to use up those extra vegetables and reduce food waste.

I hope you give it a try.

This is the mixed air fryer vegetables.

As always, if you have a question about today's show, feel free to reach out to your local county OSU extension office, or leave us a comment on social media.

There are many great horticulture activities this time of year.

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

Spring is the time to get the garden in shape and we're shaping up trees and pulling out the mower.

Don't miss it next week on Oklahoma Gardening.

We've got our last one and it looks a little bit like a covered wagon.

And so we've got to put the tarp on essentially.

Tell me a little bit about how large this park is and how much that project.

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.

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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.

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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 the Tulsa Garden Club, Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants, the Tulsa Garden Center, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, and the Tulsa Herb Society.