for beginner gardeners & aspiring homesteaders in SE Wisconsin and Northern Illinois
You have goals for your garden — you want to be closer to nature, teach your children where their food comes from, live a healthier lifestyle, maybe even grow enough of your own food to be self-sustaining. You have visions of homemade preserves, fresh fruit pies, and home-grown herbal teas for every ailment.
Or maybe you’ve just been watching a lot of cottage-core videos on youtube (I’m not gonna judge).
The truth is, gardening IS a beautiful lifestyle! It makes us feel good in body and mind to get out into the sun and sink our hands into the soil.
Until…
You can’t sprout so much as a nasturtium seed
You lose your kale to worms (happens to the best of us)
Your plants wither and droop (are you watering too much? Not enough?)
You’re not sure when to harvest (is this squash ready yet?!)
Should those leaves be curling that way?
And, my favorite: WHAT IS THIS BUG!?!?!?!?!?
No, you don’t have a “black thumb” — here’s what green thumbed gardeners won’t tell you:
Every gardening question has an answer, and in the Garden to Table membership, you will learn those answers alongside gardening enthusiasts just like you. It’s really fun to nerd out over companion planting with companions!
Let’s cultivate a growth mindset together.
how it works
This is a 9-month Live and Online group program designed for locals to the SE Wisconsin and Northern Illinois areas (aka. Driving distance to my house and our field trip locations!). We’ll be meeting online in group calls AND in person to practice our skills hands-on — in the garden and the kitchen (hello Canning Party!).
The minute you become a member, I will send you my 140-page Garden to Table Guidebook AND instant access to my Video & Resources library (a $300 value). There you will find instructions on:
- Materials to have before our first class (ex. Seed starter kit and seeds)
- Any prep you should do before we meet (ex. How to plan what you’d like to plant for the upcoming season)
- Worksheets to plan your garden goals, layout, planting dates and more
- Pruning tips, What to plant WHEN lists, Seedling care
- Recipes and preservation tips (including a simple canning cheat sheet!)
And a lot more (the guidebook alone is 140 pages - it is comprehensive!)
new program starts March 1, 2024
- We meet twice a month – with 1 Group Zoom classes and 1 Live, In-Person Workshop or Field Trip per month.
- One monthly Group call will feature a guest expert who will take us deeper into fun things, like making Kombucha, cut flower arranging, functional medicine, and much more.
$59/month or $590/year (get 2 month free AND a hard copy of the 140-page workbook)
call times
Our group calls are usually on Thursdays at 12pm or 7pm CST. However, times may change due to member availability (you help set our call times!) and guest expert availability. I do my best to ensure call times work for all members.
you will also get:
- A monthly tutorial video appropriate to the season, like pruning skills, seed sprouting and composting.
- Garden-to-table recipes for each season.
- Preservation tips, including freezing, dehydrating, canning, pickling and fermenting.
- Ideas for how to use what you’ve harvested and preserved in creative ways (especially handy when you have a bumper crop of tomatoes and can only eat so much tomato sauce!).
The goal: Bring a little bit of your garden into every meal.
this program includes live group workshops & field trips
- Including (but not limited to):
- Field trip to a local blueberry & cherry farm
- Cut flower arranging class
- Intro to beekeeping field trip
- Charcuterie board class
- Fall tablescape class – the ultimate harvest party!
- My annual, members-only Garden to Table Party at my place!
The Garden to Table Membershipis is a 9.5 month program from February 15th to November 30th, which means you get a Winter Break from December through Mid-February.
As a first year gardener, I was excited and grateful for Katie’s membership program. I was able to take away an immense amount of valuable information and apply it immediately to my own garden and kitchen. Not only does the program include practical helpful gardening tips, like pruning and succession planning, but methods of creating a lifestyle around a garden-to-table concept. I loved being able to visit Katie’s garden to see how she cares for her plants and sit with her in her kitchen and work through her canning process. The guest speakers were such a great benefit to the program as well. I was able to learn how to create floral centerpieces, make sourdough and work through some of the clutter in my house. Katie has worked so hard to give her members the best information and I look forward to enrolling for year two!
–Jenni
Katie‘s garden-to-table membership not only gave me more confidence in my gardening skills but also a community to learn from and grow with while navigating gardening basics, cooking with a seed-to-plate mentality, and embracing all of the things that gardening and the friendships made in the process has given me. I’d like to think that not only I have benefited from the membership but my family has through what we are growing and how we are using it in our day-to-day lifestyles. I love the easy access that I have to Katie’s knowledge and her numerous resources through the direct messaging system, so I can rest assured that I have accurate answers for my growing climate and troubleshooting.
– Sam
not sure if this is what you need?
This may not be for you if:
- You find yourself spending more time searching for the latest and greatest garden tip than actually gardening. My expertise won’t help you if you don’t want to get your hands dirty!
- You’re not really interested in growing your own food. I am all about beautiful, edible gardens that include flowers but we focus on fruits, vegetables and herbs.
- You live too far to make it to the in-person events. This is a hands-on class designed for our local area and growing conditions, so it works best for locals.
This is for you if:
- You live in the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin area – or Northern Illinois (USDA Hardiness zones 4-7)
The benefit of learning from a garden instructor in your area (or at least your hardiness zone!) is that I understand the unique soil conditions, weather conditions, season-length and pests we have to work with. If you’ve been led wrong by seed packet instructions or gardening books, it’s because they probably weren’t written for your growing conditions.” - You have a garden or we’ve worked together to build you one!
I originally designed this as a way to help my clients succeed with their gardening dreams after we worked together to build their raised beds and irrigation systems. If that’s you, perfect!If you already have a garden setup that’s working with you, that’s great too. This membership is ideal for gardeners who’d love support, community, a little accountability to get the garden chores done, and an expert to answer their questions. - You would love a combo of expertise and accountability.
Get accountability to get out in your garden as much as you’d like to (I know it’s not always easy to make it a priority, and YOU know how good you feel when you get out there!)Avoid getting ‘stuck’ on garden issues with monthly gardening Q&A calls, and motivation from other group members
this is also for you if...
You don’t have a green thumb
You don’t like to cook
You don’t have a ton of free time (who does?!)
This program is designed to be simple enough for beginners, advanced enough for serious homesteaders, and easy enough for busy parents and workers to fit it into your schedule.
Join us to connect with nature, your food and each other — that’s what gardening is all about.
From soil to seeds, tools, watering, pruning and harvesting…Katie covers it all! It’s all in one spot which makes it so easy to have the info right at your fingertips. I love the guest speakers she hosts, the classes that not only teach us the how-to’s of growing a garden, but also what we can do with the harvests afterward. The recipes!!! It’s literally start to finish guidance and Katie delivers it in a way that’s not only easy to understand, but also easy to incorporate right away. And it’s fun! I’ve really enjoyed getting to know everyone in the membership group and the knowledge I’ve gained has helped me have success and enjoy beautiful foods from my garden.
-Kenna
My husband and I have had a small garden for the last five years. We had a challenging season in 2018, and opted out of growing one in 2019. Katie motivated me to try again this year. With her education and guidance, our garden has prospered. Katie’s perspective on educating others to grow their own food, along with supporting local farmers, is inspiring! Thanks to her suggestions on everything from growing methods to protecting your plants from wildlife, Now I’m experiencing the joy of watching plants that we’ve never planted before blossom into food; Katie has brought back the joy of gardening for me!
– Eric + Jessica
