(relaxing music) - [Host] Today on Oklahoma Gardening, we are following up on an announcement that was made four years ago as we get a sneak peek of the landscaping that will be installed around the New Frontiers facility.

Then we'll take a look at a spring showstopper.

We'll head back to campus to get an introduction to the Food and Agriculture Product Center.

And finally, we head over to the greenhouse to get some transplants started.

Underwriting assistance for our 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 Endowment Trust.

Shape Your Future provides resources for Oklahomans to make the healthy choice the easy choice.

(uplifting music) - I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

We're back here at the Student Farm.

I wanna share with you a tropical plant that you might find in some Oklahoma landscapes.

It's important to know which plants we are dealing with so that we can continue to maintain them successfully for years to come.

(uplifting music fades out) As we've told you, this season we are following the new Frontier's Ag Hall Landscape Development, and this is the beginning of several episodes that we're gonna do over this season.

As you can see, we're just starting out, but joining me today is Nick Ouellette, who is with OSU Landscape Services, and you are responsible for turning this into a beautiful landscape, right?

- Yes, yes, Casey, thank you.

Yes, I'm our Landscape University Landscape Design Manager and like you said, part of facilities management landscape services, and we have a design team of two.

- Okay, that's a lot of work.

So we've got a lot of construction happening on OSU's campus.

So you're not unfamiliar with this sort of palette to start with, right?

- No, not at all.

So we have about 700 acres that facilities management maintains on campus, and our design team of two gets the pleasure to look at the big picture of everything on campus and be involved throughout the whole design process and manage the landscape master plan, which kind of sets some of our guidelines and how we follow things.

And that kind of sets the groundwork for everything we do.

- Right, so obviously we're still kind of visiting a construction site today, so it hasn't necessarily been turned over to you guys yet, but you're not waiting for that, right?

You've been planning, you've got it all laid out what's gonna happen here.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- Yeah, I'm trying to think of when maybe we started, but I bet you it was back from like, 2018, 2019 maybe when we first started kind of understanding some of the design developments that Studio Architecture kind of worked on, so we knew the layout, kind of the plan of the building, the architecture features, and then that's when Long Range Planning brought us aboard to kind of really understand then how we can design the landscape and make that accessible and kind of tie that into the existing parts of our landscape.

- Okay, so there's a lot of big features that are gonna be added into the landscape around here, and you've got some of those nailed down.

Of course, you know, things change, right?

With construction and stuff, so there's gonna be some flux in everything.

But can you tell us a few of the stuff that you know is gonna happen here?

- [Nick] Well, it's like you said.

You know, we start off with dreaming big, right?

So we try to understand, you know, what makes, you know, the site very conducive for student interaction and engagement and learning possibilities.

Also looking at how that site safety and site access and how it flows.

So we kind of come up with some plans then of how it ties in and then start developing the planting beds, understanding utilities, looking at what kind of utilities we're working with, how the landscape beds and sidewalks work with those utilities.

Our grade is a big one.

Understanding drainage of water, how that kind of goes.

- And a lot of these are same things that homeowners of new homes would be thinking about too, right?

- You've gotta think about your site conditions.

So basically, we develop a site analysis that really kind of is what all of that is and kind of helps direct, you know, a lot of our landscape choices based on the conditions of the site and what the plans are, the features of the building.

- Okay, and we're on the backside here, so we're, you know, it's gonna be a lot of shade between here and the Noble Research Center, right?

And so again, that exposure goes into plantings.

- Big time.

So, you know, we actually had to make quite a few changes in this area when it came to when landscape services kind of got their feet into the project, because immediately we noticed that, you know, maybe drainage from the way the water goes across the sidewalk and how there's no sun to dry that up and kind of prepare the site.

- [Casey] And you're thinking about students in the winter.

- [Interviewer] Time with ice and that sort of stuff too, right?

- [Nick] Yeah, because not only are we maintaining it for just you know, classes and then you got, yes, all the winter activities that goes on and understanding the whole flow of all seasons.

- Well I know one of the features that you guys like to do is also go vertical, right?

So I mean you've got a large building and so you don't want just this short landscape in front of it.

So what are some of the tree features that you might be adding around?

- Yes, that's a great question.

So we kind of have what I consider an institutional design on campus and we use a lot of architectural features to kind of extenuate our Neo-Georgian architecture that we have.

And we have Taylor junipers, which is a type of juniper that is only maybe two feet wide and maybe gets about 40, 65 feet tall.

So we have a lot of that to kind of balance some of this architecture.

And it's got that continuity then, and it ties it into what we already have existing on campus with some of those plant features.

Otherwise we have other types of trees that are maybe like shade trees and other types of upright ones too.

But that's probably the biggest one you'll see when you come here.

- And I know one of the things that I love about our campus is you guys are really good about finding little niches and niches to put in unique garden spaces and have those kind of private study areas and stuff like that.

So what might we be expecting as regard to that?

- That's probably the most fun in this whole type of design part, is looking for those spots to create the learning activities.

So we do have a small plaza area right now it's developed with our campus standard site furnishings that includes like bike loops, our standard trash cans, standard lighting, standard tables, standard benches.

And we're actually in a pretty close proximity to where there'll be a dairy bar inside this AG hall.

And we have a special little outdoor seating area with some outdoor architectural elements that we're bringing that are reclaimed architectural elements to kind of help kind of tie everything together too.

So we're pretty excited about that.

And then extenuate the landscape around it using a lot of our natural stone, rock mulches and different types of plant material to kind of make that space more inviting and create that sense of learning space.

- So it's hard for me to fathom that just in a few months this is gonna go from this into a beautiful landscape this fall.

When you actually get on this site, what's the first step that your crew's gonna actually do?

- [Nick] Well we have our, we call them site meetings with the general contractor and that's Flintco that is managing this project.

So we kind of get with them to start putting a schedule together.

We start reviewing our drawings, how our drawings tie into theirs.

And the first thing that's gonna occur is kind of them getting the grade, initial grade set.

And that actually is coming up here.

It'll be in about a month from now.

We expect the very south end of this project to start having its grading completed or initiated.

And they'll kind of move themselves then around the east, north side and kind of go a clockwise position and then we'll follow in right behind him.

Irrigation is the first thing that we'll kind of go with, kind of setting in the groundwork.

Our utilities is first, you know, there too.

And then we start with some hardscape materials, so some of the more of the pathways, garden features, things of that nature.

And then kind of tie in the landscape and soil reconstruction at that point.

- I would imagine soil's reconstructions gonna be a big thing after seeing what it looks like right now and not having all this heavy equipment on it as well.

- Yeah, to start a project like this, they have to get to a 99% compaction rate on their soil.

So we're really taking, you know, compaction, construction soil, which is not conducive for growing plants and things of that nature.

And our budget is not that large either.

So we have to work with what we got.

But you know, again, this isn't our first building we've done on campus, so we kind of have got the process down and understand that scarification and which is basically the process of kind of breaking the top layer of the soil and letting the water and oxygen to kind of percolate and mixing in then our types of soil that works best for those type of plants that we have.

So each garden bed kind of has its own soil modifications that are all tied into it.

- Well Nick, I know you and your team know what you're doing 'cause there's plenty of evidence around campus.

So we look forward to checking back in with you.

- Well, thank you.

I look forward to sharing it with you.

- Thanks.

(soft music) - Today I wanted to talk about a plant that a lot of us probably already know about.

However, I know that there's always new people coming into the world of gardening.

And this is a plant that if you know about it, it might remind you of your grandmother's garden.

And if you don't know about it, it's one that a lot of times this plant goes unnoticed.

But for those two weeks and it's blooming and creating this massive color, it will stop you as you're driving through a neighborhood.

So if you don't know what this is, this is called creeping phlox or Phlox subulata.

Now you can see it just makes this massive blanket of flower which is what it's known for.

It only gets to be about six inches tall and each plant will have a spread of about three feet.

And it's pretty popular.

It's relatively common in a lot of gardens because a lot of times if you're in the gardening world, other gardeners will share it with you.

It's easy to divide, so just with some division you can.

- Dig some of it up and share it.

But you can see here what happens is it actually kind of grows over different areas.

So having a height of only about six inches, it makes a really nice, low-growing plant.

What you might not know about this plant, however, is it is actually a native all the way up into Ontario.

So being hardy from Zones 3 to 9, you will find this naturally growing in kind of rocky, well-drained areas, ledges, and things like that.

And so we try to replicate that a lot of times in the garden.

Being a native, it does, however, have relatively few pest and disease problems.

You might see that it will get some red spider mites on it in the hot, dry summertime.

But other than that, it doesn't have too many problems.

The rabbits might like nibbling on the foliage a little bit, but it's actually considered unpalatable for the deer, so you don't really have any problem with the deer eating on this.

Now, you'll notice that the foliage, for most of the year, what you'll see is just kind of this green, massive foliage.

Some people also called it moss flocks because that foliage has kind of a needle-like or awl-shaped leaf.

It can be a little prickly when it gets more mature, but as it's new vegetation coming out, it's pretty soft, so it's not too bad.

Nothing that you have to be worried about or anything.

It comes in a range of colors, however, so you can see here we have this kind of light purple color.

You can also get really a dark pink or even a light pink.

It goes into whites and even into blue shades as well.

Regardless of which color you end up choosing, you're going to have a beautiful plant, relatively low maintenance, that gives you a nice display each spring.

And also with this massive star-shaped tubular flowers, it's also gonna be appealing to the butterflies and hummingbirds as well.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music fades) Today, we're here at the Robert M. Kerr Food and Agriculture Center, and joining me is Dr. Roy Escoubas, who is the director of the facility here, also known as FAPC, right?

- Yes, sure.

- Can we shorten it to FAPC for this conversation?

- Yes, absolutely.

- Terrific, so let's talk a little bit about what all you guys do.

You've been here for 25 years, and you've provided a lot of products to Oklahoma.

Let's talk about some of the services that y'all provide here.

- Well, first of all, we are a completely economic development.

So our services are to help people and their plants, help them troubleshoot a problem that they have, to help in their product development in the plant.

Maybe it's fine-tuning their equipment so they get the best out of it at any moment in time.

But oftentimes it's either product development here, or it's training and education.

We do a broad range of services, and it's focused completely on the people of Oklahoma.

- Because there's so many different times where I've, you know, met with people, and I'm like, "You should turn this into a product," right, but that can be a big road to go from a recipe or a food product into a shelf-stable, marketable product, right?

- Yeah, yes, yes.

- And that's where you guys are here to help.

- We are.

For people who are involved with startup businesses, that's usually where it starts.

Usually, in those kinds of family recipes that people thought so well about, they want to make a ton of money on 'em, so they come here and get our help to do that.

And if they were to go to the Department of of Health, thinking that they would start there, well, the Department of Health would point them to us, and so they'll come here to us, and then we'll work with them.

The first thing we do is make them go through our basic training short course so that they know exactly what their liabilities are, what the hurdles they face, the difficulties, the funding, all the things that relate to food safety.

And by the time they finish that one day's class, they make a decision that, "This isn't for me."

And so usually probably about 10% of the people who come to basic training will ever take another step forward.

- [Casey] So that's an eye-opening training.

- It is.

It's a wonderfully eye-opening experience for them because it teaches them all the difficulties of moving into the food industry.

It's a highly competitive, very difficult business, - Okay, so you can be a farmer or a baker or a producer of beef cattle, but taking it to that next level, you gotta be a marketer and an economist and all these different, you know, skills, right?

- Yeah, and most people are so good at their product.

They're terrible at marketing.

- Okay.

(laughs) - Because they don't know how to go about that.

They how to make their product, but they don't know how to sell their product, and so it really is a difficult thing.

- [Casey] You provide a lot of training, right?

Food safety, labels, and all of that stuff.

I mean, all the nutritional stuff that goes on to that label, there's certain things that have to be on there.

and you help people with that as well?

We do.

We go through the full gauntlet with 'em, and we'll take 'em step by step by step.

And so if they can be really good at one thing, they know nothing about something else, so we'll step 'em in, and so.

- If we were to receive a request from a large business, (host humming) they'll schedule, come in, do their work, and be out in a day or two.

- [Host] Okay.

- And we won't see 'em again until they need it again.

- [Host] Right.

- But with a small business, they come in and we're with 'em for months and months and months and years.

And sometimes they're still with us after three and four years because they're learning step by step and we have to take 'em step by step.

- [Host] So you really walk 'em through that process.

- The whole bit of life, yeah.

- [Host] Okay.

Well, I think it's fascinating to see some of the products that you guys have had a hand in.

For 25 years you've been here helping the people in Oklahoma.

So I've heard that you guys are a very popular tour also, just for anybody who might wanna visit.

- We are.

In fact, as I understand, we've had these tours scheduled, (host humming) and maybe it's 4,000 people a year have come through here.

- [Host] Okay.

- [Business Owner] And it's just a matter of walking in and doing that.

But we prefer someone schedule it ahead so that we can have a tour leader and we can bring 'em through the lower level and even our second floor where we have all the action of food processing.

- So people can find out more information on your website.

I'm sure about that.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- And the entry here is open to people if they wanna come in and see some of the products, but you've got a lot behind the scenes for people to visit.

Tell us a little bit about the equipment that you have to offer different producers.

- One of the things that people don't realize in this building is that we operate under a USDA grant of inspection.

So we have a USDA-inspected facility here for slaughter and dressing of livestock, beef, pork and lamb.

- [Host] Okay.

- [Business Owner] And so, we'll slaughter and process, maybe it's 300 and 400 head of livestock a year.

- [Host] Okay.

- [Business Owner] And we'll move it through our retail shop, which we have on Dock 4.

- [Host] Right.

Every Friday.

- [Business Owner] Every Friday afternoon.

- [Host] Delicious fresh meat here.

- [Business Owner] Yeah.

Yeah.

- [Host] So.

All right.

So everything from beef to bread you guys are providing and supplying to Oklahomans, 'cause one of the big things is we are obviously a big wheat-producing state here.

- Yeah.

- And a lot of it was leaving, right?

So why don't we make our own baked goods right here, right?

- Yeah.

And why not?

- Right.

- You know.

And we have two mills, two grain mills in our shop on the west side of the second floor.

And between us and the wheat quality lab, we're milling oftentimes during the week.

- [Host] Okay.

- [Business Owner] And so we can mill grain, mostly wheat.

Mostly wheat.

And we bake bread and do all kinds of things in that shop.

And we offer technical assistance to bakeries in the field through our bakery shop upstairs.

- Okay.

And you also offer workshops too, right?

For people that are wanting to learn about different types of baking as well?

- We do a lot of workshops.

We do baking workshops.

We do meat slaughter and processing workshops.

We do basic training workshops for entrepreneurial business.

We do food safety workshops to talk about food safety, the requirements for the USDA or the FDA, and even home bakery businesses, we do a lot of workshops here and at various places around the state.

For small businesses, startup businesses, home processing businesses.

- Thank you so much for sharing this information with us.

And if you wanna find out more about the Robert M. Kerr Food and Agriculture Product Center, check out their website.

(calm country music) This season on "Oklahoma Gardening," we're kind of featuring a unique series.

We're in fact going to work with the Robert M. Kerr Food and Agriculture Products Center to showcase how they help people take a raw product and turn it into a marketable product for the shelf.

And so in order to do that, you know, I could do a simple segment on what that center is all about, but I thought it would be more fun to actually go through the process as a customer.

And so this season, what we are going to do is we are gonna grow some basil out at the OSU Student Farm and then actually work with them to turn our basil into a dry herb product.

Now it's pretty straightforward, of course, you have seen us do segments about how to dry herbs and it's not too complicated of a process, but really we wanted to do that so that we could see how to scale something up.

Because a lot of times, as you know, what seems like something simple, when you try to scale it up to a certain volume, it gets a little bit more complicated.

So this season you're gonna see as we are the customers going through this process with the Food Agriculture Products Center.

But in order to do that, we first have to actually start our basil.

So today we are here at the Greenhouse Learning Center on campus to start our basil as transplants indoors first, so that we can then transplant them later on in the season.

Now, the basil we have selected for this process is a Genovese series, and that's a pretty popular and common type of basil that's often used.

But this particular one is actually called Noga Prospera.

We selected this one because it is very good for field-grown situations, which is what we'll be doing out at the OSU Student Farm, and also because it has high resistance to downy mildew and also fusarium wilt.

So those are two important things that can affect your plant, obviously, and also the vegetation, which is what we're after.

The other aspects that we really liked about this particular type of basil is the fact that it also has tall, uniform, rapid growth.

And so, of course, again, we're after the vegetation, and so having uniform, rapid.

- Growth that is high up off the ground is gonna make it more abundant and easier to harvest later on in the season.

Now this particular one has about a harvest date of 68 days.

So we're gonna go ahead and get these plants started in the greenhouse.

We're doing this mid-March, which basically is just gonna give us a head start.

So we will put these out in the garden around mid to late April, after we're no longer concerned about freeze damage on these plants.

But really it's gonna give us about a four week head start on that 10 week harvest date.

So here we have some cells that we're gonna fill up and basically this is just something you can use, whatever sort of cells you have.

These are just some that we like to use here.

And the nice thing about them is they're kind of angled at the bottom, so later on when we're transplanting them, they easily slip out.

So we are going to plant a couple hundred of these basil seeds actually, because we are gonna plant a full row, that's about 250 feet long, and we're actually gonna do a double row down that length.

So we're looking at about 300 seeds because we're gonna plant them on a 18 inch center.

So we wanna make sure that we have plenty of transplants and we'll just get these started.

I'm gonna go ahead and make just the most minor little divot here because if you look at these seeds, they're very, very small.

So we got this package.

This is actually a half an ounce of seeds.

As I sprinkle these out on my hand, you can see how tiny these seeds are, and we're just gonna put maybe one to two seeds in each little cell.

We have plenty of seeds, half an ounce costs about $16, and actually there are over 9,000 seeds in this little pack.

So again, that tells you how small they are.

We have plenty of seeds to go around, so I'm not concerned about that.

So I'm just... and because they are so small, we barely want to bury them.

Again, the general rule with planting seeds is to plant them about two and a half times the diameter of the seeds.

That's how deep you wanna plant it.

So these are almost immeasurable, so we're just barely going to put them on there and you can almost just tap them on the surface there.

So as we continue this, the other thing after we get this all planted is we're gonna put this on a mist bench 'cause that's critical.

You wanna make sure to maintain that moisture on there.

We fortunately have a greenhouse here that we're gonna put them in to get them germinated and they should be up in no time at all.

(upbeat music) (upbeat 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.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) It's not quite time to plant the whole garden yet, but join us next week on Oklahoma Gardening as we show you some plants you'll definitely wanna add to your landscape.

- So we like know what it looks like.

- Birds and humming, hummingbirds and butterflies.

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

Join in on Facebook and Instagram.

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

Tune into 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 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 Plan, the Oklahoma Horticulture Society, the Tulsa Garden Club, and the Tulsa Garden Center.

(upbeat music)