- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today we're going back with former host Steve Dobbs, as he shared with us about cold frames and raised beds.

Then he leads us on an OSU campus tour.

Finally, and more recently, we catch up with him back at his home garden in Salisau.

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's 50th anniversary.

I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

- People in Oklahoma love their gardens.

- I feel like this is the People's show.

We all know we're working towards the common goal, and that's to produce the best quality television and information for our audience.

- Well, you're not imagining things.

I am planting a vegetable garden here in November, and what I'm putting out is radish seeds.

And you'll notice that to take up all the space here, I'm just scattering 'em on top of the ground.

Now we got a nice heavy rain, just really a couple of days ago, and with radish seed, you need to plant 'em about a half inch deep.

So instead of disturbing this heavy compacted soil, what I'm gonna do is just cover it with some compost.

And again, we're gonna hopefully get some good stands there.

And we're just gonna cover it with compost about a half inch, and we'll level that out and water it in, of course.

And then once the radish seed starts to come up and we keep it watered, it'll pack it down a little bit more, but we'll thin it out as we need to.

Now, with this particular variety, it is only gonna take about 25 days to harvest the radish seeds.

And really radish will take some cold temperatures and you know, it doesn't really have to have too much warm weather at all.

And sometimes during Christmas time even, we get some warm spells.

So we're gonna be able to plant radishes today and mustard.

Now you can really, if you're a diehard gardener, grow vegetables really year round in Oklahoma.

And really the best way to accomplish that is with the aid of a cold frame.

And I wanna show you a little kit today that we found that we're gonna go ahead and put in some lettuce and spinach and other things and grow 'em in this bed under a cold frame.

And we found a little kit here called an Easy Up.

And really what it is, it's just, it's not any of the lumber, it's just plastic angles that you can use.

And well, I call it a no brainer kit, especially for someone like me that has a little bit of trouble with carpentry work.

And what you do is you just slide in two by two lumber into these plastic ends and it gives you your angles and you can frame it in no time.

And there's different sizes for the base and the different angles.

And again, that's what we're using here.

And lemme show you a little bit closer what we've done to construct our cold frame.

Inside here you'll see two of the angle ones that are actually gonna be the top of our cold frame.

And then we've used the two by twos.

And Allen, of course, our handyman has constructed this, and he's just nailed the base at the bottom without using the plastic ones.

So we have some extras to use later on in some other cold frames.

Then with our plastic, he's just taken a lath, a piece of lath, and with the excess plastic, rolled it under, so to speak, and attached that right there on this piece of lumber with the nail.

And that's what you see sticking out, that we're getting ready to bend.

So it's pretty sturdy and it's kind of cumbersome and long to fit the bed.

So I'm gonna have one of our volunteer Oklahoma Gardening Ambassadors, Don Banks, help me flip this over to kind of show you what it will look like over the raised bed.

And you'll see it fits on there pretty nicely.

Now, if you're familiar with cold frames, the purpose of it is to kind of trap in the sunlight from the heat and different things, and also the heat from the soil, and then keep the plants from freezing.

Well, it never fails.

During the winter months, we get a bright sunny day and it can also heat up too much and kill the plants and cook 'em.

With this one.

Usually they're vents to raise and open, and it's not easy to do.

On a real hot day, we would probably just roll it over like we just demonstrated.

But on a day that you don't really wanna take it off, we've decided that we're just gonna set it up on some bricks or concrete blocks.

So the heat then would escape out of the bottom and still hold enough in to kinda keep it from freezing.

And then at night we'll just pop those off and let it set right flush on the ground.

Now the nice thing about this one, it's wide enough, it keeps the heat, again, from the soil close to the plants.

We're not growing tall plants.

And you can see the angles that we have, again, is keeping it nice and close for to hold more heat.

So we're gonna be real pleased with this, I think.

Plus we really don't have to permanently attach it.

And I think the winds and everything, it's gonna keep from blowing.

The only thing we're concerned about is snowfall on the top, and we'd have to come out and brush that off.

Now this kit is really interesting because you can use it interchanging different things.

We recently tried it to construct a hobby greenhouse, and Allen helped out with that too.

In the hobby greenhouse, again, we're using the same plastic angling from the easy up.

We made a greenhouse at six by eight, six feet wide, eight feet long, and a little over seven feet tall.

We used plastic again, we used three and a half mil.

Four mil would be better, but for the width of the greenhouse, we can only find it wide enough in a three and a half mil.

So we didn't have to do a lot of cutting.

We use a lath again to roll the plastic, to attach it to the frame.

We'll be putting in some benches and landscape weed barrier on the ground to keep the Bermuda grass from growing inside, setting the plants on it.

And then we'll just be heating it with an electric ceramic heater that's thermostat controlled.

And also a heat lamp should provide enough heat in there to keep those plants going through the wintertime.

So again, the kit is really pretty inexpensive just for the plastic.

The lumber, depending on the grade and where you purchase it, could be a little bit more costly, but it's very simple and really very versatile and really makes those angles a lot easier when constructing any kind of hobby type project for your garden or landscape.

I didn't really think of it as a TV show.

It really, to me was just an extension program to reach more people about gardening.

You know, you're out doing programs and different communities and stuff, and somebody just stops you and recognizes your voice.

It, it definitely caught me off guard because I, again, I just thought of it as an extension program, and that showed how you're really going into people's homes on tv and they look at it at it a little bit differently.

This was a great way to promote OSU and Extension.

You know, it reached a lot of people on a given weekend or Saturday, we used to say that it was so big, the viewership on a weekend that it would easily fill the football stadium plus many times over.

- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening with your host, Steve - Dobbs.

Hi, I am Steve Dobbs, a former host of Oklahoma Gardening between the years of 1990 and 1995.

And I'm back, back to Oklahoma State University, if you will.

Actually, this is my third time around many of you that I got an undergraduate degree here in horticulture many years ago.

And then of course my second time was as the host.

But I've just recently come back about three years ago, 2010, as Manager of Grounds and Landscaping for the campus here.

It's a great opportunity and exciting things are happening at OSU, many things on campus.

But one of the things, of course now is an emphasis on campus beautification.

Thank to the vision, thanks to the vision of our President, Hargis and Mrs.

Hargis.

But we're putting emphasis on the grounds and landscaping.

There's a lot of research that shows students sometimes make up their mind in the first 15 minutes that they step foot on campus.

So our first impression is very important and it's an exciting time to be a part of that.

It all started really with a landscape master plan revision back in 2010, and that's helping us direct some of these new projects that were starting on campus.

Some of the new wider sidewalks, new street scapes that have beautification in mind, a lot of color going in and new landscape projects.

And then some big ones that are being designed of course too.

But one of the things that we're really trying to do is when people are on campus, whether they're a student or an alumni or a visitor just coming to campus, we wanna make it an inviting place for 'em, but also educational.

So we're starting to put some signs on campus and using new technology with a QR code that helps people learn and identify some of the plant material on campus, whether it's shrubs or flowers in the formal garden, or even some of our unique trees on campus.

And speaking of trees, we're proud to say that we're now a tree campus, USA as deemed by the Arbor Day Foundation.

And what that means is with our sustainability mission, we're just taking trees serious.

We have a tree care plan and advisory board, a budget, and again, just doing a better job of planting and taking care of the trees on campus.

So that's, that's an exciting new thing as well.

And then of course, a lot of new splashes of color and interesting things to showcase the talents of my staff members, one of which we introduced just my first year here, which was a Topiary cowboy boot.

And how appropriate is that for Oklahoma State?

You can see it's quite large, it's very extravagant piece.

It was welded by one of my staff members in design, but it's got drip irrigation in it, potting soil, and then an assortment of different plant material.

We bring it out in the spring after the chance of frost, keep it out all growing season, and then it has to go back in during the wintertime in the greenhouse.

This one was exciting enough and during enough interest that we decided to do to do another one this year, and introduced a cowboy hat topiary that's placed on campus just a few weeks ago for the first time.

And the unique story to that one is one of our staff members had a contact with Garth Brooks and he sent us a cowboy hat, a hat that he wore actually on the centennial stage when he introduced Reba.

So it had a special meaning to him.

And we scanned that hat in and then blew up the scale of that hat, welded a new topiary and made a topiary.

That's an exact replica of one of OSU's famous alumni, alumnus, Garth Brooks.

So that one's on campus if you come by, we hope you'll see that too.

Let's go take a look at some of the other designs on campus.

Well, welcome to the newly installed price gardens here, just outside the entrance of the Atherton next to the Student Union at Oklahoma State University.

We're really excited about this garden because this is our first donor funded garden that we've done since I've been back on campus.

And again, the exciting part is all of the design, including the garden landscape, and the fountain was all customed to design by my staff, so I couldn't be more proud of them.

And the garden is really intended to be a garden to honor our mothers.

And if you notice on the fountain behind me, the donors are Steward and Linda Price out of Tulsa.

And again, we've got a Latin phrase on the fountain that really stands for we honor our mothers, which is, couldn't be more appropriate here at campus.

But when you think of mom and grandma, you always think of kind of an ornamental edible or edible gardening.

So that's really what we've tried to do here with kind of a formal knot garden, if you will.

We've got lots of edibles, German demander and parsley and tomatoes, all kinds of things that you would expect to see some edible flowers and very showy perennials that you might see as well.

And the thing that we're gonna try that's so unique about this garden, a lot of the vegetables and herbs that will be harvested will be used in the Ranchers Club inside the Atherton at the restaurant.

So we're excited to try that a little bit too.

This is just one of the many gardens that we have planned for a future donor possibilities.

So if you've not been to Oklahoma State University lately, you sure want to come.

Please send your kids of course, too.

And it's been fun to come back and try to host Kim, you're doing a good job.

And thank you for the opportunity.

Go poke.

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.

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

- I mean, that view is amazing.

- Yeah, - Yeah.

A little different Stillwaters view.

- It is.

We have rolling hills, we're in the foothills of those arcs, 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.

Yeah.

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 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, 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 sedges and - Stuff.

Yes.

A lot of SGEs.

The water seeps down and that helps the tree too, A 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 look as well.

- Absolutely.

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.

Oh, - 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.

Yeah.

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.

Or 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 'em.

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 tree trimmings in the bottom.

I've used - Ornament like 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.

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 - 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 behind.

I worked.

- 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, - Well insect protection.

- 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 - Floating rope?

Well, this is the, 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 all 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.

Even in - A raised bed.

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

Okay.

That's, you know, spinach and low growing things at hag, 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.

Okay.

But I do most of the garden and 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?

And - Have - Fruit on 'em - Already.

Yeah.

They've got beautiful fruit on them.

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

And very tasty.

But man, I told you, we get to 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 seedlings.

- 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.

- Yeah.

Well, this is fantastic.

You've done great work.

- Thank you.

- Oh, 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 - It with us.

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 right here on Oklahoma Gardening as we bring you the best of former host, Brenda Sanders.

- I'm sorry.

Got - 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.

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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 Plants, the Oklahoma Horticulture Society, the Tulsa Garden Club, and the Tulsa Garden Center.