- Welcome back to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today, I've got a plan to feature that if you want to entice hummingbirds into your garden, it's a must have.

We also are looking at how to do an irrigation audit and make sure that it's working properly.

We're also discussing harvesting fall asparagus.

Yes, that's right, fall asparagus.

All that and more right here on Oklahoma Gardening.

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I've got another great native perennial that is proving that it can tolerate our Oklahoma summers.

And this you might know is a few different names, Hummingbird Bush, Flamacanthas, or also Texas Firecracker are some of the common names of this plant.

But regardless of what you know it, it is one that you should add to your garden.

So it is native to far south, central Texas and northern Mexico, but it does really well here in Oklahoma.

So it's hardy from zone seven to 10, but it has come back for us every year here in Oklahoma.

As you go further south, it might actually just flush back out on the growth.

Sometimes it will die back to the ground in that northern region, but it'll still push out new growth.

So you can see it can get quite large.

It will get about three to four, maybe even five feet tall and about that same spread.

So if it gets kind of a little bit bigger, you can always cut it back to kind of keep it back in check a little bit.

But what we love about this is the amount of flowers that it continues to produce.

You can see it just constantly is putting on and there's several more buds that it'll continue to put on these red, almost a little bit of an orangey colored tubular flower that has four petals that kind of split open.

And so it's a great attraction for hummingbirds and other pollinators to come in here with either their beak or their pervascus to get in there and get some of that nectar.

So great addition to the garden.

In addition to the red flowers, you'll also notice that it's kind of got a burgundy, almost purplish stem on the newer growth that as it ages, it sort of takes on an exfoliating bark appearance down lower in the plant.

I would suggest giving it some room so it's great for a perennial border or something like that, that you might want to think about.

Also, as far as soil conditions, it does like kind of well-drained soil.

It can handle a range of soil, even clay soils, but it needs to be well-drained and can handle droughts that we've been experiencing this summer also.

So down where it's native, it actually grows in kind of rockier conditions in some calcaria soils.

So one that we probably could push further into Western Oklahoma as well.

So great addition, full sun, and it'll be a nice attractor to your garden for those pollinators.

Joining me again is Riley Coy with the Department of Forestry here in Oklahoma.

And Riley, you've got some grant opportunities available that we want to share with our audience.

Can you tell us a little bit about them?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

Right now we've got a really unique grant opportunity for communities around Oklahoma.

It's up to $50,000 and it's match waived.

So you don't have to provide a match.

You don't have to show a match.

Now obviously if you can use some volunteer help or something like that, that will maybe help with the rankings.

It is a competitive grant.

It will be ranked among all the other applicants, but it's up to $50,000.

Local governments, 501 non-profits, tribes, anything like that can apply for it.

And - This is an Oklahoma based grant, right?

- Yes.

It's federal dollars, but - - You're competing amongst Oklahoma.

- Right.

It's only Oklahoma local governments - Is what it is.

Okay.

And what is the grant possibly for?

- The heart of the grant is to increase the community tree canopy, particularly in areas that don't have a strong tree canopy already.

That way these communities can reap the benefits of the trees that are going to be planted there.

We're trying to get native trees, trees that take less maintenance that will live longer and be a little more resilient to Oklahoma's extreme weather.

So it is a native tree grant.

You can use the money for a food forest in a food desert, for instance.

You can use the money to get your community prepared for storm readiness when it comes to your trees, to help build your tree ordinance, to become a Tree City USA.

You can use the money, the city of Stillwater where we are right now, if they wanted to use this money to get their arborist on staff certified, that's going to have a long lasting benefit throughout the entire community.

So - Not necessarily just for planting trees, but anything that goes into supporting that tree program.

- Absolutely.

We want to support the community to build a resilient tree canopy that's going to outlast both you and me, hopefully.

- Okay.

And we've talked a little bit over the years about the benefits of trees.

Go ahead and share a little bit more with us.

- Oh, benefits of trees.

I mean, they're pretty, right?

But that is a byproduct of planting a tree.

That should really never be your primary objective is planting a tree because it's pretty.

Plant the right tree, you're going to get way more benefits and it's going to be pretty.

So you want to plant trees, if you're near a utility line, you want to plant a shorter tree at maturity.

Think about it like that.

But it's going to help mitigate the heat island effect, especially in really populated areas with a lot of concrete.

It's going to help stop the stormwater runoff so that you're holding some of that storm water in place rather than it just going downstream immediately, which is also going to help with that heat island Factor.

There are studies that show that a student that can see a tree from a classroom is going to perform better on test scores and have better focus.

If they have access to green space, they're going to be able to decompress a little bit better and that improves focus and test scores and everything and learning.

There are studies that show that hospitals that have green spaces for the patients, the recovery time actually decreases in patients that can spend some time in green space.

So there are a whole lot of benefits outside of just trees are pretty.

- All right.

So we can really enhance that more through these grants up to $50,000.

And when is the deadline and where can people find more information?

- The deadline is October 23rd to submit your application.

And you can go to the Oklahoma Forestry Services website and there's a link there that says the 2026 Urban Forestry Grant.

Click on that and it'll download the application form and then you'll submit a narrative with that application form.

And we are here to help.

Give us a call, send us an email.

If you can get us the narrative before the deadline, we can help you maybe give you some tips as to how to raise your rankings since it is a competitive grant.

Now, if you send it to me at five o'clock on October 23rd, it is what it is.

That's what it's going to be.

And that's going to go into the pile with all the rankings.

- Okay.

But don't be hesitant to contact you prior with questions.

- Absolutely.

- That's what we're - Here for.

We want you to get these grants.

We want you to plant trees.

So we're here to help.

Awesome.

- Thank you so much, Riley.

Appreciate it.

Absolutely.

- Thanks for having me.

- Today we are with Andrew Fleet, who's from Oklahoma County and is the water conservation educator down there.

And Andrew, I know you know a lot about irrigation and we are using a lot of it this time of year, right?

- Yes.

Yes, we are.

- So let's talk about how to determine whether our irrigation system is working properly instead of waiting for our plants to tell us.

- It's a great point.

So an irrigation audit is something that you really wanted to do towards the beginning of the season, but since we're smack in the middle of it right now, it's still a good time to do it.

- Yeah, because a lot can change between and you don't even realize it.

- Absolutely.

Especially depending on if you're in a small municipality or a larger municipality, that pressure can fluctuate - Throughout the entire - Year.

- Okay.

So how do we go about doing an irrigation audit?

- Fabulous question.

So if you have a cat or cat food cans, tuna cans, you can take these cans, get a ruler, mark off about an inch, or what's even easier, if you have small little rain gauges that are already marked off, those are perfect.

You don't want too tall because that can throw off your measurements, but essentially look at what you're going to audit and then lay the cans out.

We usually say in a grid, no one's lawn's going to be perfect, so you got to adapt to what you have, but essentially space them out in a way that you're trying to identify and make sure that your irrigation system is evenly distributing that water.

- Okay.

So you're going to kind of do it one zone at a time.

Yes.

And obviously put some cans if you notice any problem areas specifically that you're concerned with.

- Absolutely.

- And you'll need a fair number, right?

So the cat food cans or tuna cans work really well for us.

- Right, - Right.

They're - Real cheap.

They're really easy to find.

- Okay.

All right.

So we've got a couple of cans laid out and then what's really, you turn on the irrigation?

- Turn on the irrigation, run it.

I usually say to run it for about 18 minutes and then shut it off.

And then you can walk around, you can line them all up on a table if you want to, but take a look.

Make sure that that water level in all of the cans is within about 0.2.3 inches of each other.

Okay.

You're never going to have 100% distribution uniformity on it, but that sweet spot is about 0.7, 0.8.

- All right.

And you're looking for about one inch total of water - Correct.

Right.

In each can.

- Right.

- Okay.

So that you can know that you're getting one inch of water in those areas.

- Right.

And especially right now, even, it's not a bad idea to even shoot for two inches.

Okay.

And part of the problem with people try and overcorrect with irrigation is they try and water more instead of watering maybe once or twice a week and make sure that's deep watering.

You want that deep infiltration and percolation of the water into the soil to get into the root system.

- Right.

So that causes those roots to really mine for that water down deeper, less evaporation out of the surface of the soil and stuff.

So what if we are seeing though within 18 minutes, that's kind of a starting point of maybe one inch of water on your pop-up spray heads.

What if we're seeing that it starts running off?

We don't want to lose that water, right?

No, - No, absolutely not.

We don't want to contribute to extra storm water runoff.

It's just completely unnecessary.

Shorten that time.

And this can give you an idea of what you might even want to adjust your actual irrigation time to overall.

But if you're watering for 18 minutes and you're seeing runoff, maybe bring it down to eight minutes.

- Okay.

- And then if you're seeing the runoff disappear, maybe reset your system for that.

So if you were watering maybe two cycles of 18 minutes, maybe adjust it to four cycles at eight minutes.

So you're still getting the same amount of water, but you're allowing that water time to actually infiltrate and percolate through the soil.

- All right.

So you're still getting that deep profile even though you're giving a pause to it to allow it to infiltrate?

- Yes.

- Okay.

And so right now we're checking these because a lot of things can happen throughout the season.

I know especially with sprays, a lot of times they're on the edges.

So mowers, weed eaters, edgers, trimmers, things like that can sometimes knock them.

And of course we can have damaged heads too.

Right.

Cars a lot of times right on the edge of the driveway, right?

Yeah, - Absolutely.

- So does this method also work for rotors as well?

- It does work for rotors.

You can apply basically the same concept to rotors.

This can even work, you might have to tweak it a little bit, but this can even work for a drip system.

- Oh, - Okay.

Not necessarily a subsurface system, that's a little different.

But if you have a drip system on the surface and you have the emitter spaced out, you can do essentially close to the same thing.

- Okay.

So are you putting a tuna can?

- Put a tuna can.

Basically what I would do is go to the end of your drip line and put that tuna can at the very end because first you want to make sure that that water is getting evenly distributed across the line and that the far emitter is putting out the same amount of water as the one closest to the separation.

- Okay.

So you're really measuring what's actually coming out of the drip - Line.

Right.

- Okay.

Well, good information.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

- Absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me.

- We're back out here at the OSU student farm and joining me is Parker Lasavica, who is one of the assistant managers here at the farm.

And Parker, we're out here talking about asparagus in late summer.

Tell us a little bit about what's going on out here.

- That's right.

So yeah, of course, asparagus is traditionally though of as a spring crop and that's how most people grow it, harvest it for a few weeks in the spring and then it's done for the rest of the year.

But we're trying something new.

We're doing a spring and a fall harvest on our asparagus.

- So how do you go about even getting a fall harvest?

- So what we do, we mow our asparagus in the spring when the ferns die, and it lets all the new growth come up.

But since we've got two rows here, we've got one side that we will harvest in the spring and the other side will just leave it alone and let it fern out.

And then that's the side.

So once the ferns grow in spring and summer, we'll come back, we'll mow them both.

And then the side that we left alone in the spring, we'll harvest that one in the fall.

- All right.

So we've got these two rows, one's significantly taller than the other.

So is this the row that you harvested this spring?

- It is.

Yep.

So you want to only really get one harvest on the plants themselves so you don't over tax the nutrients out of them.

So yes, this is the spring side that we did.

So we harvested it.

And I will say this is the third year, so you don't want to harvest it for too long since it's new.

So we harvested it for about a week or two and then we left it alone.

This is the side that we didn't harvest at all.

- Okay.

But you still cut both of them down, right?

Yes.

Why did you go ahead and cut this spring one down also?

- So this late in the summer, the ferns start to die.

So they'll produce seed as well that matures and the plants kind of just start to decline.

They're done for the summer.

But when we mowed them, that kind of wakes them up like, oh, they can grow again.

So we mowed both sides and then we were able to fertilize both sides, give them that boost of feed.

And then that way they'll recharge again and be even stronger next spring.

- Okay.

So you're kind of almost getting a second growing season out of them this time of year with the spring harvest ones.

Now on the fall harvest, again, you didn't harvest these this spring.

Clearly you can see a difference that you're taking some of these spears off of there.

Right.

Tell me a little bit about what's that harvest look like and is it just as good?

- Sure.

Yeah.

It's just as good flavor-wise.

It goes faster because the soil's already warm, the weather's already warm.

The plants were already growing to an extent when we mowed them.

So honestly, we mowed it and the next day or two there was already spears coming up.

- Really?

- Now we're just now seeing a larger flush.

So we mowed them the last week of August.

You want to hit kind of that late second half of August, first week of September.

Okay.

And then this is now the first week of September.

So it's been about 10 days to two weeks and we're seeing a bigger flush.

- Okay.

So you're getting a decent amount of harvest off of this fall's asparagus - And - The taste is just as good?

- Just as good.

Yep.

Just as tender.

It's not bitter or anything like you'd expect with the heat on other crops.

- Okay.

- Just as good.

- How long will you harvest from this, do you think, this fall?

- So that depends a little bit on the age of the crop.

Again, since this is its third year, we're only going to harvest for about two weeks.

Another good rule of thumb is actually your little finger.

So you harvest off the plant until the new spears that it sends up are about the size of your little finger or a little smaller, and then you leave it alone.

Okay.

So that means that it's used up its nutrient reserves and it's kind of starting to, you need to let it recharge then.

- Okay.

And what about as plants need to go into fall and winter, they need to shut down a little bit.

Is there any concern?

Obviously we're not concerned about any frost anytime soon around here, but what is the latest that maybe you would mow for that fall harvest?

- So for this part of Oklahoma, the latest that you'd mow is probably the first week of September.

Really, the second half of August is kind of a good thing to shoot for.

And then you only want to harvest.

So even as the years go on and the crop gets more robust and more mature, on the spring stuff, you could harvest it for maybe eight weeks after its fifth year or so.

The fall stuff, you only want to harvest for maybe four or six weeks at the most.

That way it gives it time to regrow, to mature, to start recharging the roots again before that first frost.

Okay.

- So you're getting a shorter window a little bit even on the most mature crop for that fall harvest.

Would there ever be a situation would you harvest in the spring and the fall on the same crop?

- It's not ideal.

You could mess around with it, especially as a home gardener.

And if you're giving it enough nitrogen, I'll say maybe, but we're not going to just because that would put a lot of stress on the plants themselves.

And since we've got enough space, we've got two rows that are decently, decent sized rows, we're just not going to stress the plants out too much.

- Okay.

Excellent.

Well, we all love asparagus and being able to get asparagus in the fall is kind of a novelty a little bit.

So thank you for sharing this with us.

- Of course.

Yeah.

- Our 2026 Oklahoma proven shrub is the Japanese Akuba or Akuba Japanica, also sometimes called the Japanese laurel.

As you can guess by the name, it is native to Japan and typically found growing in forests, in moist areas along string banks, and in rocky areas where it's shaded and moist as well.

So it prefers moist growing conditions, but it does not like wet feet, so you need to make sure you have very well drained soils.

It tolerates clay soils fine, but it needs to be pretty good drainage.

It can also tolerate some dryness, but I wouldn't say that this plant is extremely drought tolerant.

So if we have a summer like we're having this year where it's been so hot and very little rainfall in much of the state, you're going to want to make sure that you provide some supplemental irrigation to it during those hot, dry times.

It also will need some irrigation during winter if we have a really mild dry winter.

So it's an evergreen plant, so it stays green year round and it needs moisture year round, not as much during the winter, but if we have one of those mild winters, you want to make sure you keep it nice and moist as well.

Now, it is cold hearty to about certainly zone seven and really can go into zone six, I believe.

If we have a real extreme winter, we'll get a little bit of tip die back, maybe a little bit of foliage burn on it when we get into those really extreme temperatures, but they usually bounce right back.

So you can trim off the damaged foliage or the damaged stems and in spring it starts taking off and growing again.

Now, akubas are also dietious, meaning that there are male flowers on one plant and the females are on a different plant.

And if you have a male among the females, then you will often get little red fruits that develop in the fall and they'll persist on the plant through the winter and into the early spring.

Now, I mentioned that this has some colorful foliage.

There are many, many cultivars that are available.

Some of the most common ones are like this one here.

This is a common variety.

This is varigata and it has these speckles of gold all over it.

Very popular, but there's a lot of different versions out there.

So one of my favorites that we've had here at the gardens is called Mr.

Goldstrike.

Looks very similar to this one, but it has even more gold speckles on it to a point where it's almost bright yellow.

The whole leaf is yellow.

There's another one that I really like called picturata, and it has large splashes, splotches of yellow and creamy white colors in it.

So as mentioned, this is a great shrub for the shade.

It tolerates deep shade, so that's also a plus if you have a garden space that you've got large mature trees, buildings surrounding it, and they have very few pest problems.

So if you're looking for a shrub that will provide year-round interest because the right colored foliage and the evergreen foliage and one that tolerates shade, even deep shade really well, you might want to consider the Japanese Akuba.

- And as always, if you have a question about today's show or any of the other shows, feel free to reach out to your local county OSU extension office or leave us a comment on social media.

There are many 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 feature one of North America's most unique native fruit trees right here on Oklahoma Gardening.

What am I doing?

Hummingbird Bush Irrigation Audit.

Fall asparagus.

Okay.

And finally, we also are.

Oh yeah, fall asparagus.

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.

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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.

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Additional support is also provided by the Tulsa Garden Club, Greenleaf Nursery, and the garden debut plants, the Tulsa Garden Center, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, and the Tulsa Herb Society.