Meet our new gardening columnist
Hi, Oklahoma! My name is Annie Napier, and I am a new gardening columnist for The Oklahoman, sharing the duty with Rodd Moesel on a biweekly basis.
I am a native Oklahoman, born in Oklahoma City, and raised by my parents, Timothy J. Smith and Mayola B. Dunlap, in the small northwest Oklahoma town of Quinlan.
Some highlights of my 36 years include graduating from Mooreland High School in 1999, earning an associate degree in horticulture at Oklahoma State University-Oklahoma City in 2005, a bachelor's in horticulture at OSU in Stillwater, and a master's in horticulture at Kansas State University in 2010.
I met and married Robert Napier in 2012, and we bought a home together, where I can have my own horticultural adventures. My background ranges widely in the field of horticulture from organic farming to therapeutic horticulture and many stops in between.
I started my career with Oklahoma County Extension in spring 2016 and haven’t found a thing about it I don’t wholeheartedly enjoy, especially our volunteers and teaching.
I hope to be doing this for a very long time and have many wonderful mentors, including Ray Ridlen and Rodd Moesel, who has supported my career since OSU-OKC through the wonderful Oklahoma Horticultural Society, of which I am now the proud vice president.
County Free Fair
One of the best things about Oklahoma’s annual county free fairs for a horticultural educator is meeting the people who grow flowers, fruits and vegetables in our county. Some photos are shown inside of winners in different produce categories.
I will definitely vouch that Oklahoma’s weather has not lacked in curve balls for home gardeners. It’s surely true, if you can garden here, you can garden anywhere, and these gardeners definitely deserve ribbons and bragging rights.
Thank you for entering your county free fairs all over Oklahoma! It’s a rich tradition that brings us all together and gives people of all kinds something positive to focus on.
Garden care
•Gardening: Choose spring flowering bulbs as soon as
available. Plant cool-season annuals like pansies, ornamental cabbage or kale, snapdragons and dusty miller when temperatures begin to cool. Watch for specials at garden centers and nurseries since fall is a great time for planting many ornamentals.
• Trees: Watch for and control any late infestations of tree webworms. Twig girdler insects should be controlled if large numbers of small branches of elms, pecans, or persimmons are uniformly girdled from the tree and fall to the ground.
• Houseplants: Begin to reduce the amount of light on outside tropical houseplants by placing them under shade trees before bringing them indoors for the winter.
Lawn care
• Discontinue nitrogen fertilization of Bermuda grass by Sept. 15. Why? Because applying late nitrogen can lead to lush fall growth that may cause the lawn not to be ready for cold weather and also makes the lawn more susceptible to the fungus that causes spring dead spot disease.
• Brown spots in your lawn? Don’t automatically assume that your lawn has brown patch disease. According to OSU Fact Sheet HLA-6420, brown patch and dollar spot are caused by a fungus that can be controlled with fungicides.
Good maintenance practices will prevent problems from developing in most yards. Brown spots can be caused by inadequate watering in some areas. The peak month for Bermuda grass lawn watering is usually July requiring the most water and November through April requiring no additional water.
Water requirements for Bermuda grass vary from month to month depending on how much rain your yard has received. The best thing to do is water Bermuda grass when it starts to look wilted and to water deeply to a depth of 6 inches by running two cycles in one day, as necessary. More lawn watering tips can be found at SqueezeEveryDrop.com.
Simple Irrigation Checkup for Home Sprinkler Systems (OSU Fact Sheet HLA-6615) is a good resource for homeowners to use in evaluating their system. The University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Fact Sheet12-28 lists possible causes of brown spots.
As you have questions throughout the month, you can write or call your Oklahoma county extension office. For answers in Oklahoma County, contact us at okmg answers@gmail.com or 405-713-1125.