(gentle guitar music) - "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.

(gentle guitar music) As those plant catalogs flood your mailbox, today on the "Best of Oklahoma Gardening", we revisit some of the vegetables we planted in our garden last season.

We also take a second look at the All-America Selection program and how it might help you plan your garden for next season.

(gentle guitar music) It's that time of year that we're gonna start adding a lot of plants in our garden.

And I know we add a lot of vegetable gardens, but don't forget to add some fruit as well.

A lot of times, we talk about different fruit trees and things like that, that you can add in the garden.

But today, we're gonna talk about blueberry bushes.

Now typically, blueberry bushes need an amended soil, because they prefer a pH around 4 1/2 to 5.5, but we've got an option for you in case you don't want to go through the hassle of really changing your soil pH.

Try growing them in a container.

So today, we've got a container here that we're gonna plant a dwarf blueberry, called Jelly Bean, in.

We just need a small container, 'cause it's only gonna get to be about a foot to two feet.

But, in order to get it growing properly, we want to make sure to give it the right environment.

So we're gonna start out with a potting soil, just regular potting soil that you would get.

But to that, we're gonna add about 50% of that volume in peat moss.

And so, we've got our peat here.

You can see, we've got to break it up a little bit.

So this peat is going to help lower that pH and really get it to be a better environment for our blueberry to grow in.

So now that you have your soil good and mixed, we're gonna go ahead and start adding some of that into the container that we want to plant our blueberry in.

And usually, it's best just to go ahead and fill it half full, so that you have room to work with as you're putting the plant in there, and to spread those roots out.

So again, we're gonna pull out our plant here, and this is called Jelly Bean, is the variety.

So it's only gonna get to be about two feet tall.

So it's really intended for patio cultivation.

You can see, we've got it well watered actually, so that we can, hasn't dried out or anything.

So we're gonna spread those roots out.

Looks like I need to add a little bit more soil here.

Now, when you're planting something, you want to consider the height at where you want that final plant to be.

And so, typically, in a container, you don't want to fill the container completely full of soil because as we water, it would wash that soil away.

So we want to be just a few inches below the actual rim of the container, and the plant should be at that depth that it was naturally in.

So you can see where the root ball begins, is right there.

And so, we're gonna make sure that that soil does not bury up above on those stems.

So we've got our plant there in the center.

It's got plenty of environment for it to grow, plenty of rooting space, and it's gonna have a lower pH, because of that peat that we've added.

So now, we can just plan it in a location where it's gonna get plenty of sun and start to thrive.

Now we also have another one behind us here, and this variety is not necessarily adapted for patio.

So it's gonna be a little bit bigger, but you can see we have a much larger container.

So you can even use blueberries that aren't necessarily suited for containers, as long as you have a big enough space.

But still, amending a container like this is better than amending your whole garden at a lower pH.

So at this point, we have got 'em planted, and we're not gonna worry too much about fertilizing just yet.

We're gonna go ahead and allow those roots to get established before we fertilize.

Now you can just side dress with urea, if you want, or you can get more of an acidic fertilizer, something that's for maybe azaleas or rhododendrons.

That will also work, 'cause they tend to have a little bit of sulfur.

So again, that's gonna help lower that pH in your soil.

So we're not gonna fertilize just yet, but we do want to go ahead and water these, even though they're gonna be hooked up to irrigation.

We want to make sure that those roots have good contact with that new soil that they're being put in.

So we're gonna go ahead and water 'em.

And then, at this point, we're just gonna wait.

Now, after your first season of planting these, we're not too concerned about getting any blueberries off of these.

In fact, we really just want to get that plant established.

- So we're gonna go ahead and pick any flowers off that we might see, just so it doesn't spend that energy into producing a berry, and spends that energy in building those roots.

After you have your blueberries watered in, then they're ready to continue growing.

This is a really easy way to incorporate blueberries that need a low pH, without adjusting all of your garden soil.

(gentle guitar music) We always enjoy featuring All-America Selections plants that we get to display here at the Botanic Garden at OSU.

And over the seasons, you've seen us talk about several of their vegetables and ornamentals.

Now they send those seeds to us to feature as a display garden, but today we want to mention and showcase something else.

And that is their executive director.

Today, we have Diane Blazek, who is with us.

She is the executive director of All-America Selections, and we're happy to talk to you a little bit about the program today.

- And I'm happy to talk about it as well.

- So, you're out of Chicago.

So it's exciting to have you here in Oklahoma joining us.

Tell us a little bit about, we're just one of many display gardens that you have partnered with all over the country.

Tell us a little bit about some of your other partners that you have.

- Okay, well, first of all, don't say just, because it's a wonderful part of our program.

It's a very important part of our program.

So we have trials, and these trial judges get these entries from all over the world.

No matter where the breeder is located, they can enter our trials.

They do a great job trialing 'em from anywhere from one to three seasons.

And then we present them, on a silver platter, to our display gardens.

You guys grow them out.

You label them with the variety name and the AAS logo, and then everybody can come see 'em.

All your visitors then know which ones are AAS winners.

- Right, and so tell us a little bit about that trialing process, because we are happy to feature them here.

And we know that several of them do well in, not only this region, but across the country as well.

So what is that process?

- Exactly.

So we have anywhere from 20 to 30 different judges for each trial site, 'cause we have different trials.

We have one for vegetables.

We have one for annuals.

We have one for perennials.

So we have a lot of different horticulture professionals who are judging these, and they do it totally volunteer.

So they don't get paid for anything.

They're giving us their time.

They fill out evaluation forms, and only if it performs better than comparison varieties, which I can explain, then it gets an AAS award.

So a comparison variety is like, let's say there's a red petunia in our trial.

It's trialed next to an industry favorite or a home gardener favorite red petunia.

It has to perform better.

If it's the same, it does not win.

- [Casey] Okay.

- So once they win, then in the next year, we send 'em out to all of our display gardens where you guys plant them.

And yes, we have over 200 display gardens throughout North America.

- [Casey] Okay, how many trial gardens do you have?

- [Diane] Right now, we're up to 90 different trials, and one trial site may do one trial.

One trial site may do all seven, 'cause there's seven different categories.

We also trial in ground and in containers now.

So we really want to know for the home gardener, is this gonna do well?

We've got this new Pot-a-peno jalapeno, and it was made to grow in containers.

So for everybody who wants to grow on their patios or their balconies, we're testing for that now.

- So I think that's a really important feature of the trials that y'all do, because we're flooded on the market with different options.

And a lot of times, they look very similar, but to actually know that they are performing better is critical.

So, a lot of people are trying to grow on their patio.

So can you tell us a little bit about some of those other plants that maybe are offered for smaller?

'Cause not everybody can grow a big garden of tomatoes.

- Exactly, yeah.

So we actually have a search function on our website for container suitable.

- [Casey] Okay.

- [Diane] And so, all anybody has to do is click on that little function and they'll get all the edibles and the ornamentals that work great in containers.

- [Casey] And while we're talking about your website, that's a wealth of information, because all of the plants that you'll see that are in a display garden are featured on your website with information.

- [Diane] Right, right.

And every single AAS winner, all 863 of them, have their own webpage.

So on the webpage, there's all the growing information, the height, the width, the comparisons, what they were grown next to, yeah.

Pictures, so you know what it's going to look like.

All that is on our website.

- [Casey] And so, did this start with just vegetables?

'Cause I know you're doing a lot more now.

Tell us a little bit about that history.

- Yeah, in 1932, we actually started with two trials, one for annuals, ornamentals.

We call them ornamentals now.

They were called annuals or flowers back then.

And vegetables, which now we call edibles, just to embrace all the fruits that we were getting in.

So yeah, we started with those two back in 1932, but now we've added annuals or ornamentals that are vegetatively propagated, as well as perennials.

So we do have a nice selection of perennials now also.

- So how do you know what's gonna be out there next year?

Do you have any?

- I'm totally clueless.

(laughing) I do not know until I get all the scores in from the judges, and then we do all the math on it, and we figure out which ones have scored high enough to become a potential AAS winner.

- Okay, and so I think we are in the mountain region.

So as a display garden, we get-- - Certain ones that have one in our region as well.

Can you kind of talk about, if somebody lives outside of Oklahoma, or in other regions?

- [Diane] Sure, yeah.

What we do is when we do this mathematical equation and look at all the scores, we first look and see if it's a national winner.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- So, if it has done well everywhere in all six regions, it's a national winner.

If it doesn't score enough for a national, then we look at each of the regions, and let's say it did well in three regions, or two regions or one, then we grant it a regional award knowing that the judge in that area said, "Hey, this one did great."

It puts up with our climate, it puts up with our rain, it puts up with our humidity."

So, that's the purpose of the regional winners.

- Okay, excellent.

Well, I think a display garden is a great feature for the consumer to come and find.

And just because it's in the winning category for our display garden for so many years, there's been some that you've had that have lingered around, right, on the market?

- Very, I think a lot of people figure that a heirloom is about 50 years old.

Well, we have heirloom heirlooms, I think.

We have the winner from 1934 "Imperator" carrot is still available from multiple sites.

"Straight-8" cucumber is still available.

There's fewer flowers that are still available just because there's been so much progression in the breeding work with there.

But yeah, it is kind of fun.

You can go back and find some really old varieties that were AAS winners.

- And, so one of the big questions we wanna finish on is if a consumer was to walk through a display garden, or a trial garden and really want to find those plants, how would they go about finding those plants?

- [Diane] Well, they look for our logo, the little round logo with the AAS letters on it.

But also on our website, we have links to a lot of online retailers.

We probably have about 60 different online retailers, and if they're carrying that particular winner, there will be a link right on our website to go right to their website, so you can buy the seeds.

- All right, thank you Diane so much for all of this information, and we look forward to continuing in this partnership.

- Thank you.

- Today I wanna talk to you about two different plants, but they're actually known by the same name, and that's Cynara cardunculus.

Cardunculus is the specific epithet, or the species name which actually translates to resembling a thistle, and you can see, it does look like a thistle.

With this kind of textured foliage that's very deeply lobed.

Also, I'm not going to touch this too much because it does have spines on it.

So, you can see on the tips of it, they get really kind of pointy there.

Now, this particular one is cardoon, and it's really grown more for an ornamental because of that texture, that silvery foliage which adds a nice detail into any garden, but especially in the vegetable garden.

Now, you might wanna consider putting it because of those spines around the edges somewhere maybe you don't want people cutting the corners and things like that, or maybe you have somebody that's trying to dig into your garden, and this might deter them just a little bit.

However, it is edible, but it's probably not the part that you're thinking of, instead it is the stems that's the edible part that's most often used.

Now, usually it is mounted up with soil to prevent the sunlight from getting to it and photosynthesizing this creates a blanched stem.

When those stems are harvested, they're often boiled for a long period of time to get some of the toughness off of it, or the skins are then peeled off of those stems.

Now, this is often used in Italian dishes which makes sense since this plant is native to that Southern European Mediterranean climate, because it has become somewhat invasive in parts of California where it's escaped the landscape.

But it's a good plant both to include in the ornamental garden where it's most often used, but as well in the vegetable garden.

Now, this particular plant might've reminded you of another plant that you probably thought I was gonna say when I mentioned this one was edible, and that is the artichoke.

So, if you look down here, this is an artichoke which is also the same genus and species Cynara cardunculus.

However, it is considered to be in the scolymus group.

Now, some people still label it as Cynara scolymus, so you wanna make sure if you're looking for the true artichoke to see that word scolymus in that name somewhere.

Whether it says scolymus group, or the species is scolymus.

Now, the difference though is the fact that the artichoke did actually originally descend down from the cardoon plant, but it's been bred to have less spines in it.

So, you'll notice the ends are a little bit softer, they're not quite as pointy.

And also the flower bud which is what we harvest for the artichoke has been bred to be a little bit larger, and also a little more tasty.

Now, what's interesting, you can see though our artichoke did get a little more exposed to the heat, and it's past its prime for cutting and harvesting at this point.

But like the cardoon, it's gonna make a beautiful flower as we allow it to open up, so you're gonna see this lavender thistle-like flower once again.

But what's interesting is we often think of it being the flower bud that we're eating, but these green leaves that we often break off and dip into butter, and that's what the tenderness that we enjoy.

Those are actually bracts which is a modified leaf.

So, this is the part that's harvested on the artichoke that has descended down from the cardoon.

Now, we typically grow this as an annual.

Both of these are hardy from zone seven to nine.

So, if you're going to try to overwinter, what you're gonna do is cut it back in the fall, and molt it heavily to hopefully overwinter it.

Now, if you're looking to continue on your artichoke, the thing about this is if it goes to seed, typically these seeds revert back to more of the cardoons.

So, that's not really how you wanna keep that lineage of the artichoke.

- Artichoke, the best way to propagate your artichoke is through division.

So you can see here, we've got one that's putting on another pup here.

So that would be our plant that we would continue on.

These also work as great container plants.

So something that you could put in a container and then again, bring it in to overwinter it that way, as well.

Now there are two cultivars that can be grown from seed that actually do well as artichokes, and that's Imperial Star, and also, this particular one is called Green Globe.

You can start those from seedlings inside, indoors, in early winter, and then transplant them out into your garden.

And usually, you'll have buds about 75 to 85 days after you transplant them.

Now, again, just keep in mind that that heat will start to open those buds.

So you want to make sure you get 'em right at their peak time, to be able to harvest them when you want to enjoy that buttery goodness.

So whether you're growing the cardoon or the artichoke, and whether it's for the ornamental garden or the vegetable garden, regardless, the plant needs moist, well-drained soil, and it needs full sun.

(playful music) - As a beginning gardener, it can be really confusing starting out.

You're really excited, so you go to the nursery or any other store with plants, and you just start looking around at all the different kinds of plants there are.

You pull a tag out of one of the plants, and you realize there's a lot of symbols and words that you don't understand.

So one of the first things you'll want to know about is your plant name.

So your plant goes by several different names.

Most commonly, you will use your common name for the plant.

This is not specific at all, and you could be referencing a multitude of plants with one specific name.

To be more specific in your names, you want to use the scientific name.

The scientific name is a Latin name that does not change.

And so, you could be talking with someone across the world, and if you use the scientific name, if they know anything about plants, they'll understand what you're talking about.

To be even more specific than that, you'll add the cultivar name to the end of that.

The cultivar name is within single quotation marks at the end of the scientific name.

A cultivar is a cultivated variety, which means that humans had intervened and selected for certain traits, such as the color of the leaves, the flowers, and other hardiness type of traits.

The next thing you might want to know about is the life cycle of your plant.

Your plant could be an annual or perennial.

Those are the two most common life cycles.

And annual is a plant that grows, reproduces, and dies within one season.

A perennial, on the other hand, is a plant that grows, reproduces, and it will live for many different seasons.

It will come back year after year, and it will just keep growing until it reaches its mature size, and eventually, it'll die.

Knowing whether your plan is an annual or perennial is really important in knowing how much space to give it.

On your plant label, there will be different measurements.

So you might see height, width, or spacing, and each of them will have a different measurement with them.

The height and width is the size of your plant whenever it reaches full maturity.

So you're gonna want to make sure to give it as much space as it requires.

So your plant will keep growing and growing, and if you put your plants too close together, then you'll have an increase of pathogens, diseases, pests, and they'll also be competing for other resources and other nutrients.

Another term you might see is sun requirements or lighting.

There are several different types of terms related to this.

You might see a term that says full sun.

It's also referenced as sun.

This means your plant needs six or more hours of sunlight to be healthy and thrive in the place it's planted.

Another term you might see is part sun.

This means your plant needs three to six hours of sunlight.

It can handle the more intense afternoon sunlight as well.

On the other hand, a part shade plant also needs three to six hours of sunlight, but it does not like the more intense afternoon sun.

It prefers the morning sun.

Another term you might see within that is full shade, or just shade.

This means your plant would like two or less hours of sunlight each day.

You could place it to where it gets two hours of morning sun or underneath a tree, where it will have the light filtered through the tree branches.

Another term you might see on your plant label is zone hardy to hardiness, or anything related to that, or a temperature.

The USDA created the hardiness zone map.

It divided the United States into 13 different zones.

Each zone is divided by 10 degree differences.

They took the average annual low temperature for each zone.

So Oklahoma is in three separate zones, zone 6a in the northwest corner, and zone 8a in the southeast corner.

You might've noticed that I said the letter a after the number.

Each zone is further divided into a and b.

And the difference is that zone a is five degrees cooler than zone b.

So Oklahoma, the bulk of Oklahoma, is in zone 7.

So zone 7a is five degrees cooler than zone 7b.

Understanding these basic terms when it refers to plants, will give you a good jumpstart on having a happy and healthy garden.

- I hope that you gain a little bit more confidence in your plant selections.

If you want anymore information, check out this fact sheet.

(calming music) - The season's wrapping up but it's time to harvest one last crop and that's our sweet potatoes.

We have been growing these all season.

As we know, sweet potatoes are really a warm season crop and they really thrive in that heat as they're actually native to Africa.

So we've got our sweet potatoes, we planted ours in a raised bed here and generally you want to harvest your sweet potatoes when the soil temperature begin to drop below 60 degrees.

So being in a raised bed, we wanna make sure that we're getting them out in time.

Now, the first kinda step to do this is to go ahead and remove a lot of your vegetation.

And so we're just gonna cut that out of here.

Make sure you don't cut your irrigation.

Pull that aside, so now that we've got our vegetation pulled up, we're gonna go ahead and start digging.

You wanna be careful when you're digging.

If you were doing this, obviously in the ground you might use a spade or a garden fork or something.

And you don't want to bruise those roots too much.

So be careful as you're digging around to sort of find those.

It's kind of fun.

It's like a little treasure hunt.

So you can see we've got a couple in here.

And you might have started to see them kinda press themselves up out of the ground, that's another indicator that they're ready to be harvested.

So, I'll just shake some of that roots off.

Look all all those sweet potatoes we've got there.

And we'll get them cleaned up a little bit later but we're gonna go ahead and harvest them like that.

Of course we have varying sizes in there and while usually, depending on their variety, the maturity will range, sweet potatoes start to form this tuber after about two weeks and then at that point they just start bulking up.

So the longer they're out there, and again depending on their variety, you might get longer ones or you might get fatter ones.

So the nice thing, you can see our soil is slightly moist and you wanna make sure that if you're digging your potatoes, having a moist soil is a little bit better than having a dry soil, as that prevents some of the scarring that might happen as you're digging those up out of the ground.

So you can see we've got some of our potatoes here.

We're gonna go ahead and clip off some of these fibrous roots.

We don't need those.

We're gonna take these and now, they aren't ready to eat just yet.

We're going to need to cure these and to cure sweet potatoes you wanna put them in a hot, humid environment.

So, temperature should be around 80 to 85 degrees and the humidity should be about 85 to 90 percent humidity.

So find a location and put them in there for about seven to 10 days and that curing process will really allow those starches to turn into the sugars that we enjoy in our sweet potatoes.

(energetic 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.

(energetic music) Next week on the best of Oklahoma Gardening, we look at the bigger picture as we visit a productive cool season garden and some beautiful landscapes.

(calming 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.

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 okgardeningclassics 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 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.

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