Meet Katie Oglesby of Katie Oglesby Gardens

I recently got to interview one of my very favorite gardeners in the world on the Grow Your Self podcast. None other than Katie Oglesby, owner of Katie Oglesby Gardens in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. That's right, she's a gardener in Wisconsin, even though I'm sure many of us assumed you can only garden like two days out of the year there. Take it from me, I have walked through Katie's kitchen garden and her row garden. And I am not exaggerating when I say like I've never been in such a magical place.

I'm truly inspired by Katie. I know this much about kitchen gardening, but she knows THIS much about growing fruiting plants and growing vegetables on a commercial scale and so much more.

She not only gardens from about March/April through November in Wisconsin, she is growing a garden business there. So Katie is going to walk us through what a year in the garden looks like for Wisconsin.

What Does Your Garden Look Like from January Through April in Wisconsin?

It's frozen outside in January, so we substitute being outdoors with indoor gardening projects like growing microgreens. January is also when the garden planning starts.

In February, I order my seeds for the year. It depends on the year, but I have planted some spinach seeds as early as February in cold frames. This works because the cold frames warm up the soil a bit. Plus, a lot of people don't realize that spinach is super cold hardy. I've had spinach and kale semi-overwinter in my garden and rekindle their growth in the spring. I'm usually itching to start with these greens right away because I'm sick of the grocery store salad greens.

March is seed starting time. It's still snowing at this point, but I go ahead and sow seeds for more greens and carrots outdoors. Some of my raised beds have cold frames covering them, and then I typically add garden hoops (mine are just PVC pipes formed into little arches over the beds) and drape some plastic sheeting from Home Depot over them to maximize what I can grow in the other beds. This is sufficient to get things going so that I can have a really early salad garden. That means each bed will flip multiple times throughout the year as the weather warms and then grows cold again.

As we get closer to the end of March/beginning of April, I'll start planting some sugar snap peas and a few other things like beets.

So before I even get to the end of April, I've already got a lot of veggies planted in my garden. I will say, it's hard to find seedlings at this time of year. Green houses and local nurseries aren't offering plant starts yet, which is why people don't know that certain plants should be planted sooner rather than later. I see a lot of garden fails with cool season crops in July because people aren't getting them into the garden until the end of May, when they needed to go in back in March or April.

As soon as the snows ease up a bit around the end of April or beginning of May, that's the time to plant things like broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, fennel, and leeks. I'm pushing the limits a bit here.

What Does Your Garden Look Like from May Through August in Wisconsin?

Our last frost date is around May 10th. We have actually had little cold snaps past that, but I just keep rolling. So the plants get a little nip? They'll be okay!

Once the last frost date comes and goes, all the warm season plants—peppers, tomatoes, eggplant—are going in. The last thing I plant is typically my sweet potatoes, and that's just because the seed companies don't ship the sweet potato slips to me until the end of May or even June. I mean, they're being responsible; they don't want to have to replace slips for people who put them in too early.

By June, early-season perennial crops like strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus are really starting to come in. I actually see asparagus as early as April sometimes. The greens are still productive in summer, and then as the weather warms, all our herbs are really taking off, ready to be cut.

The goal during this time is to think through eating with the seasons based on what we can bring in.

At the end of June or beginning of July, I actually start planting for the fall garden. Your garden should never be fully planted, in my opinion. You should always be planting.

The end of July and beginning of August is typically when I can start harvesting tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. It depends on the size of the seedlings that went into my garden and also the types I'm growing. Early cherry tomatoes are typically ready. I try to make sure I have a variety of plant types when I'm planning my garden so that they all come at different times. Staggering harvests means you can maximize your enjoyment of them. You can eat what you pick without feeling overwhelmed.

By the end of August, I do my second planting of cauliflower, broccoli, fennel—all of those cool season crops. I make sure they're short-day cauliflower and broccoli types.

What Does Your Garden Look Like from September Through December in Wisconsin?

The idea that you can only garden here from Memorial Day to Labor Day has been ingrained in us, but I'm like, "No, don't abort mission on Labor Day! Keep going! You have two more months of fresh food."

We typically see our first frost in October. Things like kale, broccoli, and cauliflower will be fine because they're frost resistant. This past year, we got the zap on Halloween, and it took out my dahlias and some other things. But there was still plenty growing after that. I harvested brussels sprouts through Thanksgiving.

By November and December, I'm starting to clean the garden out and do a bit of garden hygiene like adding new compost to prep everything for the spring. We don't know what spring will bring—it could be wet and rainy. And because I want to plant as soon as I can, I want to make sure everything's ready to go. That includes having the cold frames set up already. I also use this time to preserve some things to get me through winter.

And then it starts all over again.

What Fruit Do You Grow in Wisconsin?

I try to make sure I have fruit throughout the entire season, basically from about May till November in Wisconsin.

There are strawberries in June, and blueberries and raspberries in July. I actually harvest raspberries from July through November because I plant different varieties (early, middle, and fall varieties).

In the fall season, the fruit trees produce—cherries, apples, and pears.

We grow all of these on one acre of land. We started primarily with berries, and then the fruit trees came later. Growing trees is another skill set, another thing to take on and learn.

When it comes to growing perennials, it's important to know you're not going to see much harvest in year one. That's the bummer year. You won't really see much until year two and beyond. Asparagus is more of a year three. You can only take one spear per crown on year two, and then that starts to increase the next year.

How Did You Learn to Garden?

I'm self taught. I met my husband in 2009 and had never grown a thing. He had a little garden, and I just started being like, "Let's make it a little bigger. Let's make it a little bigger." I never read a gardening book or watched a YouTube video. I really didn't know what I was doing. It was all trial and error. I'm a tactile learner, and so I had to teach myself. I just kept tilling up every vacant spot of land I could find, adding crops, and learning how I wanted to do things differently.

I learned a lot of things the hard way. People get disappointed when they have a setback in the garden, but to me, that was never a negative thing because I didn't know what I didn't know. Honestly, every lesson is a gift from the garden, and you're going to be a better grower for it.

I said to my husband one day, "Let's do a farmers' market," and he was like, "You've never even been to a farmers' market." Katie and her crazy ideas! But really, that's when everything changed. Trying to figure out how to grow commercially was way different. Needing to show up to the market every week with something new (like a different type of lettuce) forced me into succession planting. I didn't even know what that was until then. After, I thought, "If we're doing this commercially, why are we not doing it in our home garden?" I realized that getting a bunch of the same thing all at once can have a deterring effect on people; they're sick of it, and people don't really embrace what it could be.

What Did Your Career Look Like Before Starting Katie Oglesby Gardens?

While we were selling at the farmers' market, I was still working full-time. I was in the legal field for a while. I was actually a private investigator, and I was working for a nonprofit law firm, and then I moved to financial services. Gardening was just something I did on the weekend and on the side as a hobby.

I got sick during the final year of doing the farmers' market. I have this image that's imprinted in my mind: It was late one night. I had the headlights on my car aimed at the garden, and I was wearing a headlamp as I knelt in the broccoli aisle. As I moved down the row, I was pushing a pizza box next to me. I remember that because I got very sick just a few weeks after that and had a hard time recovering. I couldn't get any answers for what was wrong with me. At the end of the day, I started watching some food documentaries, and I thought, "Okay, Katie, your garden is healthy, but your soil is not."

That's when I changed my perspective. I thought, "I'm going to go back to the garden because the one thing I can control is how I nourish myself. The one thing that I am in control of is my food." I started to grow just for myself, to heal. Then I thought, "If I can do this for myself, maybe it would be beneficial for others, too."

I started my business in 2020. It was supposed to be a health coaching business, but I kept thinking about how the garden was really what helped me heal. I thought everybody had this negative view of gardening because we think of labor and being bent over. I did and still do garden in the ground, and it is so much work. I saw Nicole growing in raised beds and thought, "If I can make gardening more accessible for people and give them a way to grow their own food more aesthetically, that might be the answer to getting gardens into more backyards. Then they'll understand that the quality of food is different when you grow it yourself."

And that's how I ended up here.

When Did You Start Growing in Raised Beds?

We were actually forced into adding some raised beds. We had poor drainage, and after some really heavy rains one year, everything was rotting from the bottom up. My husband and I threw up some raised beds that weren't great. The lumber was too thin; the size was all wrong. We built one bed that was an 8ft. x 8ft., and then I realized, "Oh gosh, how do I even reach the center of this bed to plant and tend?" We learned a lot from those mistakes.

We obviously weren't utilizing raised beds to the level we are today.

Who Is Someone You've Gotten to Help Since You Started Your Business That Meant a Lot to You?

I had this mom reach out to me, saying, "We need to change our lifestyle. We've had some deaths in the family due to cancer." It was a pivotal point for them. They bought a bunch of acres, but they didn't know what to do or how to get started. I could tell there was some skepticism on behalf of some of the other family members when she hired me. But they came to me later and said, "The kids are so happy. We can't imagine our property without our garden, and you are totally right—fresh cauliflower tastes different than the store. We just didn't believe you."

They could see the difference in their family. They could taste the difference in their kitchen. The children were learning a new skill set, something that so many others have lost throughout the years. Just to see the parents transition, the children transition... They were eating better and better and adding more and more to their garden. They really embraced that lifestyle in a way I couldn't have imagined.

What's Something You Wish You Would Have Known That First Day You Dug into the Dirt?

I really truly love all the mistakes I've made, but I do wish I would have known just a little bit more about succession planting. There were a few things I really didn't get that prevented me from maximizing what I could have done. But I am where I am because I had hard lessons, which turned into great gifts.

There is one mistake that still haunts me. At the time, it definitely brought me to my knees.

It was super hot one August, and we were moving. We were completely overwhelmed, and the garden needed to get watered. My husband Matt was like, "I'm throwing up overhead sprinklers."

I walked out the next day to a whitefly infestation like I'd never seen before. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was almost ready to walk away from it all—that's the level of disaster.

I will never overhead water again. Never ever.

I'd like to point out this was Matt's bright idea, not mine! But I'm still traumatized from it.

What's the Legacy You Want to Leave Through Your Business?

My hope is that I can transform as many properties to be as edible as possible. I just think we don't maximize what we can do. We don't realize how much food we can grow ourselves and the impact that could have. We'll enjoy better quality and nutrient density in our food. The more edible I can turn the properties I touch, the better.

Follow Katie & Consider Making Your Yard More Edible

I don't know about you, but I'm looking around my yard and wondering, "Where can I become Katie Oglesby?" Katie took me to gardening school on the Grow Your Self podcast and taught me how she grows about $1 million of raspberries on her land each year. You've got to check out her tips here. Seriously, I'm renaming her the Million Dollar Raspberry Woman.

My goodness, Katie is changing the world one family, one garden, at a time. Watching the properties she's transformed inspires me to do the same. Make sure to head to her website and sign up for her weekly newsletter. Follow her on Instagram. Book her ASAP if you live in Wisconsin because she's about to be real busy once everybody decides they want to grow a million dollars' worth of raspberries on their land, too.

Thank you for being here and bringing back the kitchen garden!