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August 1, 2026
10am-4pm
This full day class is open to home gardeners & small scale farmers alike, with any or no experience. Once the garden is planted, how do you best care for it? There is low-maintenance, but never no-maintenance, and with our guidance we’ll help you figure out exactly what your garden needs to thrive. Mid-summer maintenance can keep your plants healthy with bountiful harvests until fall frosts.
This is a very special collaboration with Sam Tilton and Kristi Koziolek, with decades of experience and knowledge, you might learn too much in this class. We’ll work in the garden together and, using the examples in front of us, you can expect to learn about soil health, weed management, good harvesting practices, selecting plant varieties and planning your garden. You can also bring any questions to them about your own garden for insightful answers. Kristi and Sam also each have extensive tool collections that they are excited to teach you about.
The best part is that you’ll get to taste things that are ready in the garden!
Topics included:
Trellising tomatoes, cucumbers & other unruly plants and why
Harvesting to preserve plant health
Weed identification, management & uses
Identifying & controlling pests & diseases
Beneficial insects vs pests
Types & benefits of mulching
Best tools & techniques to ease wear on your body
Watering- how much, how often and how do you know
Please be prepared to work outside in the garden. Suggested things to bring include:
Clothes that can get dirty
Work gloves
Hat for sun
Sunscreen
Bug spray
Water bottle
Favorite garden tools (tools will be provided but you are welcome to bring your own if you wish)
Tuition: $90
Materials: $5
Since this is an all day course, lunch is included.
This course is for students 14+
Your Instructors
SAM OSCHWALD TILTON
(he/him)
Sam Oschwald Tilton is a former vegetable farmer and passionate hort educator.
He taught horticulture at Lakeshore Technical College and was the Direct-Market Vegetable Specialist for UW-Extension. He works as an organic farm advisor, helping farmers improve their weed management, soil, and machinery systems. Through his business, Glacial Drift Enterprises, he also delivers hands-on trainings to farmers and organizations around the Midwest. He organizes the Midwest Mechanical Weed Control Field Day and lives in Minneapolis, where he enjoys gardening with the neighborhood.
KRISTI KOZIOLEK
(she/her)
A lifelong student of art and nature, I live by the seasons. Spring brings new growth & energy. Summer is buzzing & busy. Fall is a place to calm down and winter a time for rest, rejuvenation, reflection and, for me, creating. In summer’s rush of garden compositions, both personally & professionally, I excitedly dream about fall & winter’s artistic explorations. Each winter is a dive into myself and memories of the other seasons through oil painting, printmaking and needle felting.
Primarily self taught after attending an arts high school, I fell deeply in love with oil painting landscapes in 2021. In October 2023, I took a felting class and was smitten. Needle felting as fine art has allowed me to stretch and grow in new ways as an artist. Using the same principles & elements of design, color theory, and eye for detail that I apply to my paintings, I’m on a quest to blend and layer fibers to render realistic scenes in wool.