- Welcome back to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today, we are talking about how to understand our water test results.

We'll also look at a popular tree called the Pawpaw.

And finally, I've got a few more plants that I'll introduce you to, to add to your shopping list for next season.

All this and more, right here on Oklahoma Gardening.

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That's what makes Oklahoma gardening true to Oklahoma and true to gardeners.

Today, I want to introduce you to the Perennial Plant of the Year for 2026, and that is this big blue stem right here.

It's a cultivar called Black Hawks.

And it's been out on the market for a couple of years, but it has just continued to impress people as we've been able to experience it and see it grow.

So being a type of big blue stem, we know that it's going to be hardy here in Oklahoma and be able to tolerate a wide range of soils.

So it is actually hardy from zones three to nine, so that completely covers Oklahoma and the greater Midwest actually, because big blue stem is one of the king of the prairie, the great Midwest here.

And so it can really handle all of the climate and the weather that we so often experience here in the Midwest.

So what's neat about this particular Black Hawks, however, is you can see the distinctive black color that we have.

So in early spring, you'll see this kind of darker green foliage emerge, but then as it goes later into the season and we start to get some cooler nights, you're going to see that foliage express more of that purple, burgundy, almost black-like foliage that comes on later on in the season.

Now, you'll see that it has the traditional flower of a big blue stem that's got these three flower heads to it right there, and it kind of resembles a turkeyfoot, which is another name for this plant.

A common name is Turkeyfoot.

So Black Hawks is a great addition to any garden.

What's really nice about it, like a lot of the other ornamental grasses, is you can use it for screening.

So you can see here, they used it for screening at this kind of electrical station right here.

So eventually these will cover this up.

They'll get to be about two to three feet wide and five feet tall.

You can see that they don't need a lot of maintenance.

Initially, you want to be able to get them established, but over watering and over fertilizing will actually cause these plants to flop.

So you really want to give them minimal maintenance.

Now, they're pretty disease and drought tolerant.

So after they're established, the only maintenance they're really going to need is later on after the winter, early spring, you'll want to cut all of this foliage back and allow that new growth to come back out.

The nice thing, however, is that it gives you year-round interest because you can keep it not only through this beautiful summer foliage and into the fall where it gets more burgundy, but later in the winter, you're going to have that upright vegetation, which is a nice benefit for wildlife throughout the year too, because the vegetation is nice bedding material for birds as well.

So whether you want to use it as a screening material or just individually in your perennial border, it pairs nicely with a lot of our other natives like Rubecchia that has that yellow flower that contrasts really well with this deep purple foliage.

It's a great addition to your garden.

So if you haven't tried Black Hawk's Big Blue Stem, give it a try.

It's the 2026 Perennial Plant of the Year.

Today we're joined by Andrew Fleet from Oklahoma County who is a water conservation educator.

And Andrew, thank you for joining us today.

We're talking about how to test our water, specifically irrigation water.

- Yes, yes.

- So why would we want to do that, first of - All?

Well, it's very important to get a baseline of where your water is.

If you have a garden you're going to install, or even if you've had one for a few years, it's good to know what the water you're working with.

- Right, because essentially water is what you're providing to the plants and could contaminate them.

Yes.

It's bad water, right?

Yes, - Absolutely.

You can be concerned about boron toxicity levels, maybe high levels of salts.

There's a few different things that the lab here in Stillwater will test for, that those results will go back to your county educator and they will review those along with the lab and basically give you some step-by-steps on maybe you need to tweak your water, maybe a filter, or maybe you're in the clear.

- Okay.

So of course our lab here on campus that we send soil samples to also will test water.

Tell us a little bit about what it does test for and what it doesn't test for.

- Absolutely.

So a couple of the primary things people are concerned about when they're testing their irrigation water or even their water in general with us, bacteria, we do not test for that.

If you really want to know your bacteria levels, go to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality or a state certified lab.

They will happily test for that.

You might have a little bit longer time to weigh on your results, but go to them for those.

We do not do those testing.

- And that often influences whether you can drink the water or not.

- Yes, 100%.

There is one caveat to that though.

There is the Oklahoma Well-Owner Network that is run by Dr.

Jeff Sadler.

They will test for bacteria.

- Okay.

- But other than that, we do not test for - Bacteria.

Okay.

So that's well tested.

- Yes.

- But we're talking about wherever our water comes from and goes through our irrigation lines.

Tell us a little bit about some of the stuff that they do test for then.

- Absolutely.

So we'll test for things like boron or your TDS, your total dissolved solids, sodium, calcium, nitrates especially, a lot of basic cations, anions, some basic inorganic minerals that oftentimes you'll see on the back of a fertilizer packet, but you might not be used to seeing them on a water report.

- Obviously, a lot of chemistry goes into all of this and we won't get into the technical too much, but you can if you want to talk to your educator.

But a lot of that can affect a plant health.

Let's talk about some of those basic ones, the key ones that you're looking at that can cause problems with plants.

- Absolutely.

So one of them right off the back is sodium.

If you have too much sodium in your water, depending on your soil texture, that can accumulate over time.

And what you might end up seeing is something called physiological drought.

So say you've got a plant and you're watering it, you're being diligent with your irrigation, but it looks like it's wilting.

It looks starting to shrivel up.

That's because of either sodium or just too much excess of salts in the soil.

- Okay.

And it can be a factor of many different things.

- Yes.

- All right.

Sometimes the result is to leach that sodium out of that soil profile, but depending on your soil texture and the amount of clean water or rainfall that you get, that can be problematic more frequently, right?

- Absolutely.

- Yes.

Oh yes.

So there's a lot of different factors.

It's hard to say this is the guideline on some of these numbers, right?

- Right, right.

Probably what I first look at when I get an irrigation report back is I start with the pH.

- Okay.

- That's your master variable because everything else is really dictated by what that pH is.

- Okay.

- Even if you have maybe low levels of specific minerals and your pH is out of whack too much, that could drastically affect your irrigation water and the crops and plants are growing.

- So what's that range that you're really looking for on pH?

- Really, I don't want to see anything much below a 6.5 and at most an 8.5.

But again, this is also going to be extremely dependent upon what you're growing.

Some plants don't mind a huge fluctuation of pH.

Some are very testy and very sensitive to it.

- Okay.

And regardless of whether you know the chemistry or not, the nice thing about this report is it will come back with recommendations on it, right?

- Yes.

Yes.

Your county educator will work directly with the lab, the people at the lab, and basically come and generate a recommendation on maybe you should find alternative sources of water or maybe you should look at some kind of filtration system, ion exchange, water softener, something that's tailored to your specific water.

- Okay.

And not just the quality of the water as far as the plant uptake, but also being able to utilize that water through say drip irrigation?

- Yes.

Yes.

One of the things I really look at, if someone on the intake form writes that they're using a drip irrigation system, one of the things I will absolutely look at is hardness.

- Okay.

- This is typically going to be the accumulation of calcium and magnesium in your water.

And if that's much over 100, 250 parts per million, you're going to start to see.

If you've ever been taking a shower or looked at the kitchen sink and you see that white stuff accumulating, that same thing will accumulate inside your drip irrigation line, that scale.

- And so we're talking about irrigation, but the lab also tests for household for appliances like that as well, right?

Yes, - Absolutely.

So one of the things that's kind of confusing with the household test, people see that and they go, "Oh, it's a drinking water test.

It's a potable water test."

It's not a potable water test.

It's basically to give you an idea of just, again, the inorganic minerals that are present in your water from the household perspective.

So if you have scale that's accumulating, you can get an idea of how much of your harness is, your total dissolved solids.

The one thing that we do have that it would qualify as a health indicator is nitrates.

Okay.

And I know this is a major concern, especially for families that have newborns, maybe some families that have some older family members, elevated levels of nitrates, specifically anything much higher than 10 parts per million, that can cause health complications.

- Okay, good to know.

And so how do we go about water sampling?

- Fabulous question.

So you can get just a regular plastic water bottle.

And what I usually recommend our residents is rinse it out three times with the water you're wanting to sample and cap it on the fourth and bring it to us immediately.

Don't leave it in your car, especially right now with this heat.

Bring it to us as soon as you can because you really don't want the water to be affected in that delay time.

- Okay.

So make sure it is a water bottle, not a Coke bottle or Gatorade - Bottle.

I would steer towards a water bottle.

Yeah.

Stay away from a soda bottle.

Even those water bottles, some of them, each water bottle company is going to have their own mixture of minerals they've included.

So that's why I recommend rinsing it three times is that you're trying to get out whatever excess minerals are left over from that water bottle that you had.

And then you're going to bring that, you want at least a minimum of eight ounces.

That was what the lab needs to do their testing.

- Okay.

And of course the extension offices also have water bottles if you wanted to swing by before and pick those up.

- When you bring your water to the office, you'll actually have it get poured into one of these sample bottles and we'll have it labeled to send off to the lab and everything so we know it's your water when the results come back.

Okay.

So this is really all the amount you need.

This is about eight ounces of water and that's what the lab needs to do, run their tests.

Okay.

- All right.

So when you're turning on your faucet, any tips on letting that run or taking off irrigation heads or anything like that?

- Absolutely.

Let it run, I'd say for about maybe 30 seconds to a minute, because if you have a system that does have a high amount of salts or just specific minerals, you really want to flush those out because if you take the sample immediately from, it could say that you have a way higher range of minerals than you actually do in your system.

- Okay.

So flush it out, then fill up your, and immediately get to the extension office with it for - The - Best results.

- Absolutely.

- Today we're back in the garden with one of our favorite people, Riley Coy, with the Oklahoma Department of Forestry, and he is an urban forestry coordinator.

Riley, thank you for joining us today.

And today we're talking about one of your favorites, the pawpaw tree.

- Yes, the paw paw tree.

I love the pawpaw tree.

It's North America's largest native fruit tree.

So the Osage orange is a bigger fruit, but you can't eat it, so we say the largest native edible fruit tree.

- Okay.

And it has kind of a tropical flavor to it, right?

- It does.

It kind of tastes like a banana mango sort of custardy - Flavor.

Yeah.

- There's a couple on the ground here.

You get to try one on camera - Before we leave.

Oh, do I?

Okay, great.

They kind of have like a potato look to them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But more of a banana texture in the inside of them, right?

- Right.

Sort of a cross between a banana and a mango.

It kind of depends on where the tree is and sometimes they're a little more fibrous than others.

Sometimes they're just a perfect creaminess.

It kind of just depends.

In Kentucky, they actually breed these for their fruit quality.

So you can get some really neat cultivars that have better textured fruit.

The native ones that we find around here typically have a little more fibrous - Kind - Of fruit to them.

- How do you know when they're ripe and ready?

- The tree's going to tell you.

- Okay.

- Don't pick them off the tree.

They're going to fall onto the ground.

Okay?

Unlike a lot of other fruit, like bananas, for instance, you put them on the countertop and they continue to ripen.

Well, the paw paw stops ripening as soon as you pick it off the tree.

So you don't want to pick it when it's not ripe and then set it on the counter because it's just never going to be ripe.

And if you try to eat it before it's ripe, you're going to get that sort of.

You ever eaten a green persimmon?

Yeah.

All right.

You get that astringent little pucker factor?

Yeah.

So these have that in them.

That eventually turns into sugar and sweetness, but you have to let it get fully ripe on the tree.

- Okay.

So you got to time it when it falls, but before the deer, right?

- And the squirrels and the raccoons and everything else that wants to eat these things.

Yeah.

If you've only got one tree, you might be lucky if you get to try fruit off of it.

You actually do need two trees in order to make fruit.

They won't pollinate themselves.

They have to have a whole different tree to pollinate each other.

That's the only way you can get fruit off - The bees.

Okay.

And aren't they a colonial kind of tree?

Like they make colonies - Of.

Yeah, we call it a thickening species.

Okay.

Yeah.

Or clonal is the other term.

But yeah, it's going to send up root sprouts.

So out in nature, you might have a vast grove of paw paws that's all the same tree.

Basically, it's all coming up from the same root system.

So you're not going to get any fruit on that.

So if you've got a wild patch on your property and you're not getting fruit, find the seedling from a different tree, go out there and plant that in your cluster of trees and boom, you'll start getting fruit next time.

- Okay.

And I know there's a lot of people that are kind of really into the paw paws and kind of trying to get that genetics, right?

And cross-breed it.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- Yeah.

We've got a group of people in central Oklahoma that are working real hard to try to find the right provenance because the native range for Pawpaw sort of goes right into Eastern Oklahoma and stops.

There's a couple natural patches west of that.

There's one in Guthrie.

There's supposed to be one over in the jet area, which would probably be the furthest west patch in the whole United States.

So we're right here on the very western fringes of its native range.

We're trying to find a provenance or a local seed source that can withstand central Oklahoma's weather so that we can repopulate its native range.

And it's just a passion project between a bunch of pawpaw enthusiasts around the state of Oklahoma.

- Okay.

Well, let's talk a little bit about the tree specifically.

So we've got a tall one growing here behind us.

Yeah.

And we have them planted kind of understory along the fringe of some other trees.

Is that kind of the ideal location you would normally find them?

- Yeah, and you would normally find them right up next to a creek bank, right?

They like that moist, deep, rich soil, right?

They also will tolerate a drier, higher, shallower soil spot.

They do prefer to be in the dapple shade.

So right where we're at here, you've got a big oak here and a big pecan right next to it.

So they're getting that dapple shade.

They're getting some of the shade from the afternoon and some from the morning, but they're also shaded in the middle of the day, which is really important for them.

Now, if we can find a local provenance seed, that's going to be able to grow in full sun, a little bit better.

And that's what we're hoping to find because they fruit better in full sun, but they grow better in full shade.

- And also on our other one here, we had some storm damage from one of these bigger trees that sort of took it out, the top of it.

- Unfortunately, when you have trees that like to grow under bigger trees, that's just par for the course.

- Right.

But we have to, so we've gotten fruit off of this.

And so a great tree for Oklahoma, at least Eastern Oklahoma, maybe pushing it towards the west.

- We'll see.

Yeah.

I mean, I've got some growing in my yard and they're doing great.

They're in full sun and they're not affected by this long, dry, hot spell, really.

I water them a couple times a month maybe, and that's really all they need, as long as they're a native provenance.

Now, if I was to try to grow a Pawpaw tree from Kentucky in Oklahoma City, it would not like this hot, dry weather that we're experiencing right now.

It would have a lot of stress on - It.

Okay.

So make sure you're sourcing it locally.

- If possible, yes.

All - Right.

Thank you, Rileigh, so much for this information.

You're welcome.

This time of year, I always enjoy going and looking at some of the annuals that are doing good to share them with you because if they can survive our summer heats, then we know they're probably an exceptional plant.

And today I want to tell you about this 2026 All America Selection Winter.

This is the Zinnia Perfusion Double White Improved.

So you probably have heard of the Perfusion Zinnia, but the thing about this one is it is a double flower and it is really truly a pure white flower also.

So it's going to get to be about a foot tall, but have a little bit wider spread on it to about 14 to 16 inches wide on it.

We've got it planted here just in the ground, but it makes great containers as well as it just kind of spills over and fills up that space.

Now you can see it's kind of got some yellow to the center of it, depending on some of the variability in it, you can see a little bit more of that, and some have pure white flowers altogether.

But what makes this even better is you don't have to deadhead it.

It will continue to put on flowers from the beginning of summer all the way into fall.

And so you can see how the display here is still very prolific.

We've got a lot of flowers and that is a great invitation for pollinators.

You can see that there's plenty of butterflies on this as well.

So if you're looking for that white color to add into your landscape, look for the Zinnia Perfusion Double White Improved, which is a 2026 All America Selection Winner.

- Today, we're going to talk about a simple formula that you can use to make any homemade salad dressing.

So many of us will spend months growing our fresh garden vegetables for a salad, but then we reach for a store-bought salad dressing to add to it.

But you can easily make your own salad dressing at home using things that you probably already have.

So to start, you start with one part of an acid.

So that could be any type of like your red wine, white wine vinegars, or lemon juice, balsamic vinegar.

So you've got options there, whatever you have available.

Then you do three parts of an oil.

So usually that would be like an avocado oil or extra virgin olive oil.

Those would be good choices on your oils.

Then after you have your one part acid and your three parts oil, that's when you can get creative and add whatever combination of herbs and spices or other flavorings that you want to add to it.

So today, I'm going to make an example of a lemon vinairette.

I'm going to use three tablespoons of lemon juice.

That was what I'm going to start with.

So three parts of that would be about a half of a cup of oil.

So I'll add one half cup olive oil to my three tablespoons lemon juice.

Now for the herbs that I chose for this dressing, I'll be using two tablespoons parsley, one tablespoon chives, and remember, you can make whatever herbs that you want to add to this.

So if you have herbs in your garden that you're not quite sure how to use up, this would be a great way to do it.

And then I'm going to add in one tablespoon of Dijon mustard just to give it a little bit more flavor and it'll add a little bit of color to it as well.

And then one minced garlic clove.

And now you can add this to a bowl like I'm doing.

And if you do it this way, you'll just want to use a whisk to whisk all your ingredients together.

Another option would be you can add it to a mason jar or another jar with the lid and you'll just shake the jar.

Okay, then we'll go ahead and we will add our dressing to our salad.

Now this recipe will make about four to five servings, but we'll go ahead and add that to the salad.

And then the rest you could put in your refrigerator and save it for later.

It should last about four to five days in your refrigerator, but I hope you give this salad and the dressing a try.

- And as always, if you have questions about today's show, 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 right here next week on Oklahoma Gardening as we learn how butterflies and technology are coming together.

Look for the Zinnia Provision.

Look for the Zinnia Perfusion Double White Improved Zinnia.

What am I saying here?

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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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 the Tulsa Garden Club, Greenleaf Nursery and the garden debut plants, the Tulsa Garden Center, the Oklahoma Horticultural Society, and the Tulsa Herb Society.