Notes from eighteen years of organic kitchen gardening in South-East Wisconsin (USDA Zone 5B)—where high-density raised beds, inverted-L steel cattle-panel trellises, and indoor winter trays turn a short Midwest summer into twelve months of food grown using organic methods.
When Wisconsin is buried in snow, basement heating mats and grow lights produce fresh fenugreek, chia, mustard, arugula microgreens, and wheatgrass juice—while slow-maturing Asian gourds start indoors two months early.
Read indoor microgreens guideUntreated construction-lumber raised beds are loosened, raked level, and misted before our handmade oak-dowel templates stamp 1,200 precision seed holes per bed at 2-inch spacing.
Inspect seeding templatesThirty tomato plants, pole beans, cucumbers, and Asian gourds climb 6-foot T-post cattle panels; deep-rooted comfrey leaves and worm castings feed the soil for continuous picking.
Explore the 2018 season summaryFrost sweetens the Brussels sprouts; German Giant garlic cloves are planted 6 inches deep under shredded leaves; pressure canners, dehydrators, and freezers put up the harvest for winter.
Read fall planting & storageEvery structure and tool in our garden—from table-saw grooved cedar fences to oak-peg seed stamps—was built to solve a practical problem in a short-season climate.
We plant root crops and compact greens just 2 inches (5 cm) apart in untreated lumber beds, using handmade wooden peg templates to stamp 1,200 equally spaced holes per bed so weeds are immediately recognizable.
Inspect seeding templatesSixteen-foot galvanized steel cattle panels cut in half and bent into an inverted “L” on inside-mounted 6-foot T-posts carry heavy gourds, cucumbers, and pole beans overhead so we can harvest without stepping on wet soil.
Inspect trellis engineeringTo prevent mold and avoid plastics, we sow organic seeds in glass and ceramic dishes over dry soilless starter mix, tamping gently with a wooden float and misting with a pressurized sprayer.
Inspect indoor growingWe prioritize multi-harvest indeterminate and pole varieties—pressure-canning tomato sauce and salsa, pickling jalapeños and red onions, blanching and dehydrating cayenne and paprika, and tray-freezing cut vegetables.
Inspect preservation methods
Heirloom tomatoes, pole and bush beans, Asian gourds, root crops, leafy greens, and backyard orchard fruit.
Untreated lumber raised beds, inverted-L cattle-panel trellises, rabbit-proof fencing, and handmade seeding stamps.
Fresh microgreens and nutrient-dense wheatgrass grown indoors when the Wisconsin garden is under snow.
A complete overview of our 2,000-square-foot kitchen garden, soil care, organic pest prevention, and harvest storage.
We live in South-East Wisconsin, in USDA Zone 5B. Our winters are too cold for growing anything outdoors, but from June through September we use 2,000 square feet of fenced beds and vertical trellises to grow and store most of the vegetables we need for the entire year.
We grow root vegetables and small leafy greens on raised beds. The beds are made with 'construction lumber'. Being not chemically treated makes construction…
We prefer to grow vining or climbing varieties of vegetable plants, as opposed to bush varieties. Pole beans, indeterminate tomatoes, cucumbers, Asian gourds…
We plant our vegetables much denser than usually recommended. The root vegetables and leafy greens we plant in raised beds are only 2 inches (5 cm) apart. Though…
South-East Wisconsin · USDA Zone 5B
“Our strategy is simple: grow varieties that give multiple harvests, plant them closely in raised beds, train vines vertically on steel trellises, and put up the summer harvest for the long Wisconsin winter.”
Full Stack Gardener is a journal of firsthand experience from a 2,000-square-foot organic kitchen garden in South-East Wisconsin (USDA Zone 5B). What started with a few patio pots grew into a year-round rhythm of dense raised beds, sturdy cattle-panel trellises, indoor winter greens, and putting up the harvest for the long Midwest winter. These articles and photographs document our 2018 growing season and share the experiments, practical ideas, and lessons that may be useful in other gardens.
We plant around 30 tomato plants every year. This year we had 16 varieties of tomatoes. Most of them produced well. We plant them about a foot (30 cm) apart.…
We grow several varieties of microgreens indoors during our long winters. Fenugreek, mustard, chia, amaranth, onion, cilantro, arugula and kale are some of the…
We have a lot of wild rabbits, ‘Eastern Cottontail’, in the area. In the first year of gardening we thought we could do without fences. Instead we used garlic or…
Bitter gourd, snake gourd, ash gourd, hairy gourd, luffa and tindora are vegetables we love. They need a longer growing season than what we have. So, we start…
Every year we plant three or four varieties of pole beans and a couple of varieties of bush beans. Pole beans are much better suited to our needs. First of all,…
We plant a couple of varieties of bush beans too every year. Though some of them are quite tasty, they are a pain to harvest. Bending down to pick them is not…
