Q&A with Kayla Morrison

NM: What got you interested in horticulture?

KM: Growing up my great grandfather had a large farm of over 1,000 acres. As a child growing up, my family wasn’t very financially okay, so we went hunting for our meat; we did a lot of gardening for our produce.

My mother owns a mobile grocery store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I’ve helped her do that my whole life. Now my children volunteer for her as well. We service the low-income housing and food deserts.

Then as an adult, I got into dental assisting. When I tried to advance myself, they told me I wouldn’t qualify because I wasn’t smart enough. They basically said students are coming out of high school with 4.0s, so good luck. I realized if I can’t get into dentistry, maybe my passion wasn’t that; maybe it was gardening. It was a struggle with my family because they thought ‘why would I go to school for farming when our family has done it our whole lives, and you don’t need to be educated.’

So, I did it anyways (laughs). I love it, and once I got into it, I thought ‘wow, maybe I do want to become educated in horticulture because maybe one day I’ll start a nonprofit organization where I can teach people in my own local community about where their plants and food come from; how we can make growing better; how we can rejuvenate our soil; how we can preserve our land.

I got into greenhouse management during my education at OSU. I had the opportunity to run OSU’s brand-new greenhouse for a year and a half. I grew various plants, vegetables and ornamental crops. From there I was asked if I wanted to do my master’s degree, and I just finished defending my thesis about precision irrigation on ornamental crops in a greenhouse. I had the opportunity to work on geraniums, petunias, chrysanthemums and poinsettias.

NM: Why did you decide to minor in pest management during your undergrad?

KM: When you’re working in a nursery or greenhouse, you’re going to have pests, but especially in a greenhouse. The pest pressure is a little bit higher in a greenhouse than in a field. Being able to control pests is just as important as being able to fertilize or water your crops. Because if your crops are being eaten, it doesn’t matter how much fertilizer or water you give them. They’re still going to end up damaged. So, I felt like that was the perfect thing for me to minor in.

NM: What do you plan to do after receiving your master’s degree?

KM: I just got offered a PhD position, so I’ll be moving over to the crop science field and the agronomy field, working on corn. Then I’ll continue to teach at OSU as a teacher’s assistant. But my main goal is to open a nonprofit and teach my local community about the different ways to grow plants and be sustainable, maybe hydroponically, which saves about 90% of your water. So, that’s a good way to be sustainable. I would like to teach the community how to collect rainwater and reutilize it.

NM: What are some of your hobbies?

KM: I’ll be honest, my biggest hobby is gardening (laughs). A lot of people ask, ‘how can you be in school for this; then come home and do it?’ But I tell them to find something you love and do what you love, and then you’re never going to be working. So yes, I’m five years into my education, but there’s not a day I wouldn’t do it all over again.

My husband, three children and I are campers. We like to go see nature, go camping and fish. Also, I’m now officially a pickle baller, just not a good one (laughs). We are a family that plays together, stays together.