(light music) - [Announcer] Oklahoma Gardening is a production of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Land Grant Mission of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University, dedicated to improving the quality of life of the citizens of Oklahoma through research-based information.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing.

- Whether you're a seasoned gardener or a novice, start by watching today's Best of Oklahoma Gardening as we provide an array of options to build quick and easy raised beds in your very own backyard.

Best of all, most of them are built from recycled or used materials, keeping the costs low while making a functional garden for everyone.

(light music) It can be overwhelming if you're new to gardening.

With all the different products out there, you might feel like you have to buy certain products in order to be successful or certain kits in order to be successful.

Or you might think it's just as simple as throwing the seeds out in the garden and watching mother nature do its work.

Well, I can't say that it's always that simple.

However, there is no right product for the garden.

In fact, all gardens look different based off of a lot of different factors, including your physical ability, your level of maintenance, your level of aesthetics that you're wanting to present, your soil, and of course your budget, are just a few of those factors to consider.

Now, we are in this space that we've mentioned as a backyard demonstration garden, where we're demonstrating different ways of growing fruits and vegetables in your backyard.

And over the seasons, we've talked about growing in stock tanks and in straw bells and different ways of growing in raised beds.

But we had a new idea we wanna show with you, and this is called a straw waddle.

Now you probably have seen this product in construction sites where it's used often to slow the flow of water and to reduce erosion, but we are using it here to create the perimeter for a raised bed.

Now you can find these at home goods or home construction sites, hardware stores, or you can possibly find old ones that are no longer used on construction sites.

So, we've anchored this down with a couple of pieces of rebar in order to, you know, make sure that it doesn't move too much.

What's nice about this is it comes in 25 foot lengths and about an eight to nine inch diameter.

So it really does make the ideal depth.

And because it's just a flexible net tube of straw, you can shape this into whatever design you wanna make it into.

Now we've used one just to make a circle.

And I will say it makes the ideal circle because it allows you to really reach in to that center.

So it's not too big or not too small.

We've gone ahead and sprayed out the Bermudagrass in the center and underneath it.

And if you wanted to, that's all you would need to do other than fill it with soil and get ready to plant it.

Now, because we live in Oklahoma and we have to contend with that creeping Bermudagrass, we've gone ahead and done a few extra measures in order to prevent that Bermudagrass from creeping in.

So a couple of things that we've done is we have put a heavy landscape fabric down underneath this, underneath the pavers, and also the straw waddle.

Now we did not do it on the center so that we can allow that root zone to penetrate into the top soil that's existing already if it wants to.

The other thing is we made use of some pavers that we already had and created a perimeter around this.

Again, just to prevent that Bermudagrass from creeping in.

And what this does is it sort of allows us kind of a buffer zone for that Bermudagrass, that we can control it before it gets into our raised bed.

So now you can see we've got the raised bed built.

We have, of course, one more thing to do, and that is to fill it with some soil.

So you could, if you wanted to, if you didn't have enough soil, there's no reason why you couldn't use organic matter that you have existing.

If it's the time of year you're constructing this, that you have a lot of grass clippings or ornamental grass cutting, you could fill that and then put soil.

Sort of like the keyhole style.

There's no reason why you couldn't do that.

At this point, though, we're just gonna go ahead and fill it with some top soil and compost.

(motor whirring) So you can see we've got our raised bed filled with a nice mix of top soil and also compost.

And we chose, we had this obelisk that we went ahead and put in the center.

So, I think we're gonna get maybe some sweet peas or something to climb on a little later, but for right now, we're gonna go ahead and plant our fall crop.

And so we've got some just root crops and some lettuce that we're gonna plant in here.

And just to give it a little bit of more of an aesthetic look, we're going to quarter this off based off of the corners of our obelisk here, and plant a crop in each section.

- Now to kind of section that a little bit better, we have a product here that I do want to show you in case you're always concerned or worried about having to thin your crop.

Because when you often sow, a lot of times those seeds are right next door to each other.

And so you'll want to go back through and kind of thin it, in order to allow that root crop to really develop to its full maturity.

But this is a product called seed tape.

And you can see that comes, a lot of different crops will come in this product of seed tape.

And what's nice about it is it's already predetermined as far as the spacing on it.

So it's basically like tissue paper.

Kind of has that texture.

So as you water it, it will break down.

So the nice thing about the seed tape is it sort of organizes your garden a little bit.

It makes it simple.

We won't have to come back and thin those seeds quite as much as we would if we had just sowed it with our hand.

Also, you'll notice that the seeds are sort of predetermined on a three inch spacing, on this particular one for the beets.

And so that kind of takes out some of that guesswork if you're new to gardening as well.

And you'll also notice on the package, just if you're curious about how many seeds you're getting.

So it includes, on this particular product, 22 1/2 feet of tape, which includes about 130 seeds.

So this product costs around $8.

So it's a little bit more than just a packet of seeds, but again, you're getting that efficiency of knowing your spacing already on that.

So on either side here of this particular one, we're gonna plant some lettuce and some carrots, and then it's just a matter of watering it in.

And you've got a fall garden crop planted.

(gentle guitar music) Today, we are here in the backyard demonstration garden to take a look at another raised bed design.

And as we know, all the different raised beds offer different options to the gardener.

So today we're looking at one that does include featuring repurposing of tires.

And to talk to us about the construction of this bunker design raised bed is Steve Upson with the Noble Research Institute.

Steve, thank you for joining us again.

- Hey Casey.

- So tell us a little bit about this bunker design.

- Okay, the bunk bed is a relatively new creation, and it utilizes semi-truck tires.

- [Casey] Okay, they look a little larger than regular.

Yeah.

- [Steve] Yeah they are.

(laughing) They are.

We've chosen a style or a type of tire that is readily available and common in the industry.

So these are available at truck stops, at tire repair stores.

Information about that, of course, is in the construction manual, the type that you need to ascertain or just pick up basically.

- [Casey] But obviously, you need two that are identical.

- [Steve] Same size.

- [Casey] Or same size anyway.

- Yeah, you want uniformity, yes.

- So the tires serve as the support for the frame.

And we support the tires with posts.

We've got two posts on each end.

- [Casey] So that was kind of prevent this round wheel from rolling anywhere.

- [Steve] Right, and keep it from falling in until we get the sides constructed using two by fours.

- Okay, so talk here a little bit about the construction.

It looks like we've got some wood disc.

Is that wood that's on the inside of there?

- It's wood.

It could be plastic if you have access to some plastic materials, but obviously the wood is more prevalent.

We use, I think, 3/8 inch, a little thicker, and that just keeps the soil within the frame.

- [Casey] And then, you've just used regular two by fours, it looks like, on the outside.

- [Steve] They are treated.

In this case, they're stained.

And they're attached to the rubber, to the tires, using deck screws.

- [Casey] So other supports on the inside, then, other than attaching them.

- [Steve] That's it.

- [Casey] It looks like it's painted on the inside.

Do you seal the inside or coated with anything?

- We do that to protect the wood.

We'll put some Flex Seal, or maybe, some people use a truck liner, but you want to make sure it's, put two coats on and make sure it's dry before you add the soil.

- Pretty straightforward, it sounds like, as far as, and it tell us a little bit.

We've got an addition to it though, because of this nice, semicircle top to it.

- That's a nice surprise.

When we started using the tires, we realized that we could use the natural shape of the tire to support a small tunnel, hoop house, if you will.

And so, we just added a few receptacles for the hoops, and we're in business.

Now this is greenhouse quality plastic film.

You can use construction grade if you'd like, but this will last a little longer.

And then we have two sections to give us a little bit more flexibility.

You could just have one piece of plastic, but this gives you a little bit more flexibility.

- [Casey] So you could open it and just partially in the center if you wanted to vent it.

- If we have the wind from, in this case, the north, we could just use this part, leave this open, and then it just rolls down, as you can see.

It's pretty cool.

- [Casey] So not only does that help kind of create season extension, but you could use that for possible pest control as well, on some of your squash and stuff.

- [Steve] Yeah, you just put some screening or some mesh material, some floating row cover.

- All right, well, thank you Steve, for sharing with us about the bunk bed, and for more information on how to construct one for your home garden, check out our website.

- I really like different options for raised beds.

And in fact, I kinda have a problem now because I can't help myself.

When I go shopping, I look at different things and I think to myself, could I turn that into a raised bed?

Well, there's a lot of different materials that you can use for raised beds.

And then I have another one here that I came across.

Now this is a fire pit ring.

It does cost about $50, but for $50, it's really easy to install, durable and low maintenance.

And so basically all you have to do is find a location and put this fire pit ring down and then fill it with the soil of your choice.

Because it is a galvanized steel, you've got this nice industrial look to your garden.

Plus, like I said, it's low maintenance.

Unlike wood, it's not going to rot and deteriorate as fast.

You don't have to paint it or anything as well.

And the other thing that I really like about it, too, is if you have grass that butts up to it, it's really nice to weed eat, so you don't have to worry about it damaging the material either.

Now you can see here, we just found a location next to our fence that we decided we wanted to plant some plants.

And so, again, like other raised beds, you can always amend the soil however you want.

So we have a blueberry in here that we made the soil a little bit lower in pH to give it that acidic climate that the blueberry likes.

So now this is an example of just using one fire ring, but we took that a step further, and we purchased three different fire rings.

So now this is kind of a design that you could use in order to make a little bit bigger display.

But what I like about it is it gives you that industrial look, and again, it's low maintenance.

So here we purchased three fire rings.

So now we're at a price of about $150, but a lot of times that's the price of most of your garden kits.

So what we did was we have a full-size ring up here that we just placed on the surface of the soil.

And then using a grinder, we went ahead and cut the other two rings.

And so here we have kind of an arc that fits into that full circle in the back.

And then we have another arc that fits into the other two.

You can see that each ring, we kind of lowered, again, this one is sitting on the soil surface.

This one we buried a couple inches.

And then that third one, we went down halfway on it.

So what is nice about this is it gives you that little terraced look, again, a contemporary look in your landscape, but a nice planting bed.

In each one of these, you can amend the soil differently.

So you could have a blueberry up top, and then you could have your regular plants down below.

So yes, there are cheaper ways to make raised beds, but for a nice industrial modern look that's low maintenance, for $150, getting three fire rings makes a nice terrace garden for your landscape.

(playful music) Today, I'm so excited because we are at Bustani Plant Farm.

And many of you, I know, come here quite often in the springtime.

And I'm so excited to be joined by Steve Owens.

Obviously, I think a lot of our fans and viewers know you.

After leaving the show, "Oklahoma Gardening," though, you came out here and started your own nursery at Bustani Plant Farm.

So thanks for having us here.

- Oh welcome, yeah, yeah.

Thanks for coming out.

It's good to be back working with Oklahoma Gardening a bit.

- Yeah, definitely.

Well, and I know how many people come in spring.

We all get your plant catalog.

We all get Bustani fever to come out here and see and buy in the springtime.

But I think sometimes people miss what there is in the fall.

So that's one of the reasons I wanted to come here specifically.

- [Steve] Sure, yeah.

In the springtime, we have a lot of variety of plants for sale.

There's not a whole lot to see in the garden.

But in the fall, it's just the opposite.

- [Casey] Yeah.

- There's not a big variety of plants for sale, but it's a really good time to see the display gardens.

And you know, we always want to have something for everybody to see.

If it's your first time, if you come several times, we want to have something new every year.

- And you always have new plants for sale, but also the gardens are always changing.

And that's one of the things that drew me out here.

Well, you can tell us a little bit about some of the projects you've done previously over the years.

- Sure, sure, yeah.

A few years back, we added a rock garden.

That's kind of a passion of mine, just gardening with rocks and plants and creating those little mountain top gardens.

But every year, we also try to do like maybe a new display with different types of foliage or some other artwork.

We did an entryway structure with the old rusty tin with lots of vines growing up on it.

But last year, one of the cool new things we did is the garden you're standing in.

- Yes.

- This we call our wattle fence garden, W-A-T-T-L-E. - Yeah, so it kind of has an English cottage feel to it for me.

So can you tell me a little bit about how you constructed this?

- Sure, sure.

I've always been fascinated with these.

I saw my first wattle structure, I guess, at the Chelsea Flower Show several years ago.

And we actually, back in 1996, 25 years ago, the very first time I was on Oklahoma Gardening as garden manager, a former host, Sue Gray, and I were constructing- - [Steve] A small wattle fence.

So they've always been kind of special to me.

- [Interviewer] We might have to find that footage and do a little throw-back.

(laughs) - [Steve] Absolutely.

That'll be interesting, but yeah, we just wanted to do a wattle, a few wattle structures in this garden and basically with the wattle fence, it's just twigs woven between stakes.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

So tell me a little bit about the construction.

Obviously it looks like your stakes are larger as branches that you drove down into the ground.

Is that what you do first?

- Well, yeah, we did the design.

We strung out string on the corners and then actually the corner posts here, you can see they're a little bit larger in diameter than these stakes.

- They look smaller.

- We dug these holes with post hole diggers.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- And we got some nice straight sticks and we set them in place and we tampered those in.

Now these other smaller stakes, they're like 15, 16 inches apart.

Those, we just, we sharpened those with a hatchet, just kind of like sharpening a big pencil, you know?

And then we put our string back up and then we just, we tried to drive those as straight as we could into the ground.

- Okay.

And that's before weaving anything.

Right?

- Absolutely - So you have those stakes?

- Get all the stakes in place.

- Okay.

- And then you go about searching for the material and it takes a lot of material.

We're lucky we have a forested area here on our property, so we could go out and select different species of young saplings and things like that.

- That's what I was gonna ask.

I know a lot of times people will use willow or something that has a little more give to it.

Did you find any particular type of wood works better and does it need to be like wet wood green wood, you know.

- Good question.

It's all types of woods.

- Okay.

- The main criteria for us was what was available, and what was... - That's important.

- What was narrow and, you know, not crooked.

The straighter the saplings the easier it is to get them to weave in place.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- But there's stuff in here, like roughly Dogwood, there's Hackberry, there's Elm, there's some native grape vine.

- [Interviewer] I was gonna say it looks a little - Yeah.

Just basically whatever we can find.

- [Interviewer] Which all just adds texture, right?

- Yes, yes.

The different textures of the bark and things like that.

And we tried to use it within about two days.

That way it was still green and pliable.

- Okay.

- Because it sits for a while and gets dry.

When you're trying to bend it in between, weaving it basically back and forth between the stakes.

It can snap.

- It starts to get brittle.

Okay.

- But the straighter, the straighter the better.

- Well it looks great.

It's a nice detail to the garden.

And it's sort of a raised bed within a raised bed.

Tell us a little bit, it looks like you might have some landscape fabric holding some soil in there.

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

The, yeah, it is kind of a raised bed on top of the raised bed here in our gardens.

I'm a firm believer in raised beds.

(Interviewer chuckles) Creating your own soil.

But we did wanna raise the soil level inside the Wattles and yeah.

To keep the soil from spilling through, we did put down like a double layer of a landscape fabric.

- Okay.

- And then we just added some compost and soil behind that.

And the plants are really loving.

- [Interviewer] So, Steve, I mean, it's a beautiful addition to your garden.

It sounds like something a homeowner could do.

What is the maintenance and how long are you gonna plan to keep this in the garden?

- A homeowner could absolutely do this.

Now, we are hoping to get three seasons out of it.

- Okay.

- Anytime you have the soil up against it, you're gonna get little wood boring beetles.

And yeah.

So two or three seasons would be great if you treat it with something like a linseed oil, you may get a few more years out of it.

- Okay, all right.

Well, let's look at some of the plants if you don't, we can not talk about plants with you?

- Absolutely.

- So, one of the showstoppers here, let's look at this pink flower here.

- [Steve] This bright pink thing here, that all the little skipper butterflies are all over.

This is a Globe Amaranth.

It's a new one called Truffula Pink, and it doesn't make seeds.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- [Steve] You know, some people like having a lot of plants that recede every year, this one does not.

So it's very well behaved.

And then we've got some Red False Vervain.

These are one of our specialties.

We breed these here at the nursery.

We have some selections that we've made.

- [Interviewer] And they continue to bloom up the spike all season, right?

- [Steve] Absolutely, absolutely.

And the butterflies and hummingbirds absolutely love them.

- Yeah, well, I wanna know about this guy.

Is this a Milkweed back here?

- Very good.

That is a giant milkweed.

Yes.

It's not winter hardy, but we love the foliage.

Very dramatic.

Then those huge lavender purple colored flowers are really something special in the garden.

- Definitely.

Well, I love again.

You've got such an explosion of color here and you've oriented everything so nicely.

Any hint as to what you're gonna do next year?

- I don't know.

I, I'll have to think about it and see what we can come up with.

We always want something new, so people will wanna come and see us every year.

- All right.

Well, thank you for letting us join you, Steve.

- It's been a pleasure.

(upbeat music) - We just wanted to give you a quick update on our pallet garden.

Now we built this several years ago and it's holding up.

Although I think this might be the last year on it.

But we wanted to just show you how much you can plant in just a four by four square box.

So on the upright edges of the pallet.

- So it's just again, about a three or four inch spacing around the perimeter.

We have planted Boxwood Basil, and we cut this back pretty regularly to keep it fresh looking and to keep that hedge look.

Inside our box, we have three different plants.

We have two peppers.

We have Just Sweet, which is a sweet pepper.

Then we also have an Aji Rico, which is a little bit of a spicier pepper.

We also have a little patio tomato called Husky Red.

So we've got three different plants in here.

And then we've got all this Boxwood.

Now on the back, we've got a little surprise.

Because we built our palette garden with a full pallet on the backside, we can utilize the vertical space on the back here for trellising different stuff.

Now you could put cucumbers, but we tried a couple of different beans.

We've got a pretzel bean here.

You can see it starting to make that pretzel shape.

Then we also have a red yard bean.

So it gets this yard long bean on it, and ours are starting to take off here.

And then finally, we have a pocket of strawberries that are growing on the back here.

So you can see how the strawberries have really taken off and trailed.

Of course, they're not producing anymore at this time, but we've got several that we can cut off and plant elsewhere in our garden.

So there you have it.

You can grow a lot of produce in just a small four by four area in your backyard.

(upbeat guitar music) The garden is starting to wake up, which means we've got another great season of "Oklahoma Gardening" headed your way.

I know I'm not the only gardener who gets a little antsy this time of year when those plant catalogs start filling our mailboxes.

It's funny, each year we get viewers asking us, don't you run out of ideas for the next year?

And of course we do not, because there's just so much to capture.

There's always new plants and new, beautiful gardens to visit around Oklahoma.

During the winter months, we've been busy behind the scenes planning for this season.

Of course, we're gonna continue to bring you timely horticulture tips and great new plants, but it's also time to get back on the road.

After two years of kinda staying close, we're gonna begin doing our regional tours as we head to Northeastern Oklahoma.

We also have a new face that we're gonna introduce you to who's going to bring us delicious new recipes to our show.

And, of course, we know how crazy our Oklahoma weather is, but we're gonna take a closer look as to how our weather can really impact our landscape over the season.

Stay tuned.

It all starts next week on "Oklahoma Gardening".

(upbeat fiddle music) 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 fiddle music) (upbeat guitar 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.

And we always have great information, answers to questions, photos, and gardening discussion on your favorite social media as well.

(upbeat guitar music) Join in on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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

Tune in to our OK Gardening Classics YouTube channel to watch segments from previous hosts.

"Oklahoma Gardening" is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

The Botanic Garden at OSU is home to our studio gardens, and we encourage you to come visit this beautiful Stillwater gem.

(upbeat guitar music) We would like to thank our generous underwriter, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry.

Additional support is also provided by Pond Pro Shops, Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants, The Oklahoma Horticultural Society, and Tulsa Garden Club.

(upbeat guitar music)