- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today, I'll share with you a unique plant you might find in the landscape.

Next, we head to the OSU Student Farm to learn more about some of the problems they faced with pumpkin production.

And finally, we catch up with former host Steve Dobbs to see his personal garden in Vian, Oklahoma.

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.

Oklahoma Gardening 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.

Normally, I like to recommend plants you might wanna consider adding into your landscape, but I today, I just couldn't help pass up this plant.

And this is one that I definitely would not recommend incorporating into your landscape, but it is one that you might find out in the wild or on roadsides or open fields.

Here you can see we're at a new construction site, and this is one that's just kind of taken off here.

This plant is known as dodder, and that's D-O-D-D-E-R.

It is an interesting plant.

And you can see how what I'm talking about is what looks like this orangeish yellow, silly string of a plant.

It's not actually the green plant underneath it.

This is a parasitic vine because it doesn't photosynthesize very well.

And you might know and remember that plants need to photosynthesize in order to produce their own sugars in order to live and survive.

So this plant has adapted a way to live and survive without being able to photosynthesize itself.

So when it sprouts from a seed, it has about 10 days in order to find a host plant to live off of.

So as it's germinates, it starts kind of swirling around this, these thin strands, one strand will come up and start swirling around.

And research has found that it actually can sort of sense volatiles from nearby plants and really will hone in and select the preferred host plant that it wants to attach to.

Now, as it finds that plant and wraps around that particular host plant, it produces adventitious type roots that are called historia.

These historia roots will actually penetrate down into the vascular system of the host plant, allowing the daughter to then rob that host plant of water, nutrients, and minerals.

So once it finds that host plant and is able to feed off that host plant, it actually detaches itself from the soil.

Now, if it doesn't find a host plant within 10 days, it sort of just dries up because it doesn't have the capability to produce enough energy to live itself and it can't mine enough energy out of the soil either.

So here you can see we've got a successful colony of dotter that has found a lot of host plants here.

It's sort of thriving on some of this ragweed that's growing here.

And you can see it just sort of looks like this tangled mess as it grows up this plant.

Now this one particular is not actually blooming, but you can see some sections behind me where it's not quite as bright yellow or bright orange as this one is, and it's actually already going to flower.

So here I have a little clump that I took from back there.

And you might think at first this flower is the plant of the host plant, but this bell-shaped white flower is actually the flower of the dotter.

You can see it's a prolific very flouris.

It's got a lot of flowers on there that are gonna produce a lot of seeds.

And this dotter plant is an annual, which means that seed bank is very important for its survival.

And those seeds, unfortunately for us, but impressive for the plant, can live up to 20 years in the soil.

So those seeds will be viable for quite a long time.

Now, again, I don't recommend this, but a lot of times you do find it throughout the United States growing, and if you do come across it and you have it in your landscape, how do you remove it?

Well, the first thing is not to allow it to establish itself.

So if you see it when it's really small, make sure that you remove it before it's actually able to establish itself and penetrate that host plant.

But that can be pretty difficult because it's just a small little thread that's coming up.

If you do actually find it later on, once it's sort of colonized, the best thing that you can do is try to remove as much of that plant material as possible, including those host plants as well.

If you have a growing on something that you know you don't want to remove your host plant, say it's a ornamental shrub or something like that, you can try to at least prune out as much of that as possible by actually pruning some of that ornamental plant because they have found that that historia, it will actually grow into that plant.

And so if you remove the dotter from it, that historia root will actually resprout.

And while this is an annual further research, has they been found, it has the potential to over winter in those ornamental plants too.

So that's a little concerning.

But for the most part, it does act like an annual.

So it's going to die with its first frost here.

If you are looking for a chemical option to control it, a non-selective herbicide will take care of this.

But keep in mind that non-selective means that it'll also take care and kill anything else that you're spraying in that area as well.

So I just wanted to mention this, it's a very unique plant and some of that research that I was talking about earlier, they've actually planted dotter in between tomatoes and wheat grass.

And they have found that in most instances it's always gone to the tomato plant versus the wheat plant because it kind of can sense which plant's gonna be more favorable for that warm season growing climate for it to grow.

So as an annual towards the later season, like I said, we're coming out of summer, it's going to produce those flowers and produce that seed bank.

Another alternative chemical method is to put down a pre-emergent to prevent any of the dotter seeds from actually establishing in your landscape as well.

Not too much of a concern for most people, but in case you're driving along the roads and you see some yellow silly string, now you know that it's a plant named dotter.

- Well, pumpkins in the fall go well together, but sometimes we can have challenges growing pumpkins in Oklahoma, right?

- Yeah, most definitely.

- So we're in a field here, we have some beautiful pumpkins, but we've had a few challenges for the year.

What are some of the issues that you see when trying to grow pumpkins in Oklahoma, especially from maybe your expertise, a disease standpoint?

- Yeah, in Oklahoma, and thank you.

There's a lot of things can go wrong with pumpkins in the Oklahoma, but by far the most important so far is powdery mildew.

And it's caused by several pathogens.

But for one that's known in Oklahoma is mostly podosphaera xanthii that caused the disease.

And it's kind of come late around July, but before the end you can also see symptoms of downy mildew, but it's not as important as powdery mildew.

Okay.

So, and it kind of spread like wildfire if it's not controlled.

- So powdery mildew can take over if you, if you let it, right?

- Yeah.

- So what are, what are some things we can do as we're trying to prevent that from taking over?

- Yeah, so that's very important.

So first of all, you need to have a good site selection.

So where are you gonna grow your pumpkins?

Are there size that are known, that have known history of powdery mildew?

You wanna avoid that site.

And if you have that, and I say must use, probably you wanna rotate like for a few years, like a year or two before you grow your pumpkins on them.

That's very critical in your, in your, in your decision making.

After that, you have to make sure that you don't use sprinkler irrigation.

Try to, as much as possible to use drip irrigation because sprinkler irrigation spreads the, the pauses around and makes it to spread like wildfire on the plants.

One thing you wanna do also, although it is difficult because of the crawling nature of pumpkin, is to space them.

If you space them, you cannot delay the time that the spores travel around to cover the plants.

That's critical.

But again, as I said, pumpkins as kind of crawling and spread in their growth.

So the more you delay the onsets, the better you're able to control it at that, at that point.

Another thing that you wanna do, you have to spray just spray first.

That's, that's what I'm gonna tell you.

If you're in doubt of what's happening, spray first to protect your plants and probably ask later.

We have a clinic at Oklahoma State University, they plant disease and insect diagnostic lab.

You can send your samples there if you're in doubt of what is happening.

Sometimes these symptoms early on can be confused with each other.

Yeah.

So you can send your samples there.

- Okay, that's great.

So I heard site selection, cultivar selection, spacing, proper irrigation, drip irrigation.

- Yeah.

- And then you can always, if you see symptoms, take a sample, send them to you.

- Yeah.

- Okay.

So for this type of issue in pumpkins, have you seen research trials where universities are looking at, hey, what works best and how can we use that maybe in our backyards, how can, how can we take that info and use it at home?

- That's a lot of research going on on pumpkins across the country.

But here in OSU, John Damon, who was a previous professor, yeah, in my position, did a lot of work on pumpkins.

So he did some trials on chloro needle and other fungicide to see what the, which is best to apply in terms of control.

- Yeah, - I think there are fact sheets on this and if you wanna have more information on that, I can share the fact sheet with you a later point or check on the - West.

The fact sheets are always great info.

Right?

- Yeah.

So beside power media, other things can go wrong with your, with your pumpkin plants, you can still have downy mildew.

Yeah.

So not so big of an impact, but it's, it could be critical depending on your location in a glaucoma.

Also there are issues of bacterial spot that can happen.

Then squash bugs was big this year.

Typically squash bugs are not really a big thing on pumpkins.

- Yeah.

- But I was called to by a grower down in Shawnee to look at his, his pumpkin field and he had a lot of squash books.

Okay.

And that actually was part of the things that prompted us to put on a grant to look at the the in Oklahoma.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well, and I think it's interesting that one of the first things you said was site selection.

Yeah.

And I think that's what a lot of what we had going on here was this, this was a little bit rougher site in the field.

And so we've got some work to do probably to build up this soil a little bit too before we go in with other crops.

And, and so yeah, I think that's important as well, all the way through that system that you described to sometimes you just have to spray.

Right.

- Make sure you skip up with your sprays.

So if you see inocular buildup and you have a lot of powder mild or disease buildup, typically you spray within 14 days apart.

But if you see that you have too much of disease epidemics, you might wanna spray more frequently, like seven days intervals or even 10 days intervals to help to reduce the disease pressure on this.

Because long term, when you have a weak plant, it exposes it to other diseases.

So, and other things and makes it so weak that other things can come easily and things that will not typically affect the crop will start affecting the crop.

And before you know it, it comes out with several disease in one space.

- Yeah.

I think we can find a lot of these plants and infested with aphids too, right?

Where they were kinda weak and then the aphids came in and - Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and aphids are known to transmit viruses.

And if you look around the field, you're gonna see some virus diseases on the plants.

Yeah.

So it depends on the location and also how proactive we are in taking the steps to manage the diseases and other, other things like insects through the beetles.

- And if we can put all these things to practice, what would we get at the end?

Probably a beautiful pumpkin, right?

- Yeah.

If you have beautiful pumpkins, especially what you mentioned earlier on are the, the sohi mos that can come on the, on the pumpkin.

You want avoid that 'cause you want to have something really beautiful to see.

Yeah.

And to sell and to using your events and other things like that.

- That's exactly right.

Well, thank you Dr.

Gibbon.

- Oh, thank you Dr.

Mli.

Happy to talk to you.

- For more information, check out this fact sheet.

- Welcome to Morningstar Farms.

- Well, this is really fun, Steve.

I'm sure that our viewers would like to know what you're doing right now.

Hello Steve.

- Hi, Casey.

- Bring us all the way, a little past nne to meet you again.

- Yes, yes.

Welcome to what I say is God's country.

- Oh, I love it.

I love it.

It's beautiful over here in eastern eastern Oklahoma.

Yes.

Yes.

Where you have retired on the family farm here.

- That's correct.

This is my parents' home that they built in the seventies and we've tried to keep it up and never did I imagine coming back here after retirement, but you'll see why.

Okay.

It keeps me very busy.

- All right.

So the, the front yard hasn't changed too much, but the backyard maybe?

Yes, - The backyard has, of course, the front yard trees.

I matured.

Okay.

And done a little bit in the front, but I spend all my time in the back as you'll see.

- Should we go take a look at that?

Yes.

Let's go see.

- Well, Casey, now you can see why I wanted to move back here and retire.

- I mean, that view is amazing.

- Yeah.

- A little different stillwaters, here - It is.

We have rolling hills.

We're in the foothills of Ozarks, of course.

Lots of trees.

- And, and that and that's a classic borrowed view landscape design, right?

Yes.

- Yes.

And lots of rocks.

- Yes.

- Which you'll see that I've put to good use in my landscape now.

Okay.

I got tired of picking 'em up in the pasture, taking 'em to a pile.

So I'm just reusing them in the, the - Landscape.

Hey, this works.

So tell me, you had moved away for about 14 years.

Yes.

And then you came back here.

- Yep.

- What did this look like when you came back here?

Because I think a lot of people I know I can relate to it going through a PhD.

My garden is going through phases.

- Yes.

Well, we didn't make it back over here very often.

And of course I had a nice landscape when I left, but very few things made it, 'cause you know, we have extremes in Oklahoma drought and too much rain and drought after drought and heat.

And so a lot of things died, we found out, which was really, truly tough, you know, to make it.

And, and really it was just a handful of things, you know, some native perennials, some bulbs, trees of course.

But they had to live on their own.

So what you see now is all of about two to three years work, - Really - Planting.

And I'm doing it myself, just, it's a work in progress as you can tell.

And I've definitely become a better designer, I think.

But I'm still using foliage color and I am using more natives probably than I did years ago.

And, and my interests change, you know, over the years as, as I think everybody's does with gardening.

- Yeah.

Well I hear some water in the background.

You got a little bubbler over - There.

Yes.

Have a little water garden.

Have a rock garden.

Of course, we have our areas where we entertain, but a a lot of ground covers.

I'm trying to use natives with non-natives.

Just a lot of fun things using textures and, and I think, like say my design now has improved over the years.

Okay.

You know, with experience.

So you're, you'll see little pockets of things hidden here and there.

- So one of the things I see here is a, a kind of a dry creek bed.

Can you tell me a little bit about that?

- Yes.

When we moved back, this was turf grass that had been killed out.

So it was a lot of bare soil and it washes off quickly.

The downspouts, the guttering.

And so I tied 'em into this dry creek bed.

- Okay.

- That ends up down lower by the tree into a rain garden that when I calculated it would hold about an inch of water, of rainfall.

And then I've used natives from down in the pasture majority to put that native looking landscape and then that water.

- A lot of segs and - Stuff.

Yes.

A lot of sedges.

The water seeps down and that helps the tree too, right.

Tree roots.

But I have to blow it out and keep it clean.

But when it rains, it's beautiful of course.

And it fills up quickly and then it has a overflow.

But it's, it's just a nice added feature to a kind of formal Absolutely.

Look as well.

- And I, and I noticed you have probably a classic armadillo fence too, like one of our other hosts, Steve Owens.

- Yes.

Same thing.

That was the first thing I spent my money on, was to dig a deep trench and run that coated fencing down into the ground so they couldn't crawl underneath it.

And then it's a little bit more rustic, natural looking and it doesn't take away from the view - Again.

Right, right.

That's absolutely, well it is beautiful, but I see that there's even more beyond - Here.

Yes.

It continues on.

I'm getting to do more vegetable garden now.

How - About that?

Can you grow any vegetables?

Oh yes.

Yeah.

Can we go take a look at - It?

Absolutely.

Thank you.

- Well, I really like the use of your vines and your trellis to give some height around here too.

- Yes.

It, it is nice to have those opportunities to grow things vertically.

- Yeah.

- Not just across the ground - And, and ornamental as well as vegetables.

- Yes.

A lot of things, you know, take up vertical space that are vegetables and you'll see several of them throughout the garden.

- Yeah.

So you got kind of a hodgepodge.

I mean, we've got succulents and cacti next to bed of nails.

- Yes.

- Next to herbaceous gardener.

- Hodgepodge is a good way to describe it for the plant nerd.

But herbs and cut flowers and you know, figs.

And then the vegetables are the tall vegetables.

The pigs look great too, by the way.

The figs are doing really well.

The tall vegetables, like tomatoes and okra in the ground.

But most everything else would be in repurposed or recycled containers that were water troughs.

Okay.

So were feed troughs that leaked and or somebody was selling them or giving them away.

And I'd grow both flowers, cut flowers in one with the cattle panel.

- Yeah.

That's a great use of the cattle panel to - Recycle.

Holds 'em up, lost some earlier, you know, with disease and all the rain, but replanted snapdragons for the, the winter that get tall.

But it worked great.

- Perfect.

- And then more water troughs that, you know, were a flop I guess, when they were manufactured and leaked.

And so I got 'em at a cost that was hardly next to anything.

And they have really cool exteriors and they've, I've grown potatoes in them.

Strawberries you'll see radishes, carrots in them now.

- And so what's your trick to filling them up?

- Yeah.

- Have you been, 'cause that's always a thing, right?

- Yeah.

Because it's a lot of soil to fill in.

Yeah.

But I use the methods and there's different names for it, but I have used, you know, shredded up tree trimmings in the bottom.

Okay.

I've used - Orna you a culture - Style.

Yes.

I've used ornamental grasses that I've cut the tops off in the bottom, anything to save a little space, but it's all organic, so it compost and then it lowers itself and then I add compost or, or you know, good potting soil on the top.

- Right, right.

- And it's worked really well.

You would think the heat would really hurt you with the metal, but it hasn't affected it - Too much.

It's done well.

Well, I see a few more here - In front of us.

Yes.

And these are a lot bigger.

These are permanent ones that we've constructed at the right height for me to be able to rest on while I'm working.

Perfect.

- So you kind of use it as a stool while you're - Yes, absolutely.

It works.

Great.

- So what do you got going on here?

- Well, this is - Full insect production.

- Yes.

Cool.

Season broccoli.

And, you know, the, the moths and the caterpillars love them this time of year and anytime really.

So this is really an insect netting.

Okay.

And, and as I told you, the soil level sinks - Right - As it composts.

So on some of them I leave that depth.

Oh.

And then I can use this netting material over it and the clamps hold it down and you can see I need to put an arch over it now to give them a little bit more room.

But it, it really works nicely.

- So it gives you that ex extra space.

- It does, because it's not insect pollinated.

Right.

So it's a mechanical barrier on foliage type crops that works - Perfectly.

Excellent.

Excellent.

So what is, this is your, - Well this is floating rope.

Yeah.

The frost protection.

So because it's dropped in the cool season, like I'll plant spinach and lettuce over there because it's lower when we start getting the cold winter temps, I'll cover it the same way.

It gets enough sunlight, but it helps insulate it.

And last year I grew vegetables.

Cool.

Season all winter long.

- Really?

Yep.

Even in a raised bed.

- Even in a raised bed, it generates enough heat that it didn't seem to bother 'em.

Okay.

Now it's, you know, spinach and low growing things at ha the soil.

- Did you have to come open it up every little bit - Or Just when I harvested - It.

Okay.

And of course you have irrigation set up on these, right?

- Not quite on these yet, but I do most of the gardening landscape.

- Okay.

So what about this blue thing - Here?

Well, you know, I've heard about these little covers and this one's called Blue X and I bought 'em when I put in the muscadines because you get these little seedlings, you know, that came in with it.

And - I, and I'll get beat by the - Wind.

Yeah.

And I bought 'em.

And what you do is you slide this over the seedling after it's planted, this cover goes around it.

And I was shocked at how quickly they grew in a year's time.

They grew up all the way out of the top.

I was able to start staking it to make it go across.

And these muscadines are two years old, - Really - Have fruit on 'em - Already.

Yeah.

They've got beautiful fruit on them.

- So yeah, it's a, a purple variety called puck, P-A-U-L-K.

And very tasty.

But man, I told you we get experiment now and these are some things that have worked out really well for me.

And I, I was surprised at how quickly these go.

And I think you can use 'em on tree soling.

I - Was gonna ask like on other applications.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And so it, it just keeps it from Sunburning because of the color and then helps stimulate that growth.

And of course I leave some of the stems on 'em to help build that trunk size up a little bit.

- It's a pretty good diameter already.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

It really is.

For two years.

- Years.

Yeah.

Well, this is fantastic.

You've done great work.

- Thank - You.

We've seen your work on campus, but you know, to see it in your backyard.

- Well, and as gardeners we're always learning, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And you've gotta be able to kill a few plants to get to where you wanna be.

And I've done that my whole career, but I'm, I'm thoroughly enjoying it, you know, been very blessed.

- Well, Steve, and I'm so glad you're enjoying your retirement and your own personal garden now.

And it's just beautiful.

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing that - With us.

Yeah, thank you for coming over.

Appreciate it.

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

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

Join us next week as we have a show that will excite all your senses right here on Oklahoma gardening, that it will attract those - To achieve that in the long run.

But early, early on, you wanna do that?

Gonna pause for the plane there.

You're doing great though.

Okay.

- 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 into 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.