Welcome Local Gardening Expert, Dianna Wiklund

A big garden glove welcome to our new  Garden Coordinator, Dianna Wiklund seen here showing off her fast fix for punctured soaker hoses and her favorite garden tool -- a cobra hand hoe.

Dianna brings a humble and humbling background of being a Master Gardener, Growing Groceries instructor, Food Preservation instructor, and (of course) a scratch cook. Her recipes start with "first you sow the seed for…"  Dianna also practices what she preaches -- 90% of their family's produce and eggs come out of their home garden which includes turkeys, chickens, slug-eating ducks, and one very vocal goose. 

She'll be taking over from Sophie DeGroot keeping track of our individual garden needs for bulk orders of soil, compost, irrigation, and harvest bags; plus contributing to the monthly newsletter and supplying ideas for growers on soil and plants. "Purple plants do better in shady/cool gardens," she says. 

Dianna's personal gardening style is organic first, no dig (except potatoes), plant/eat for your conditions, and rotate crops to avoid soil pathogens from building up. She likes to keep things as simple as possible to make gardening less work and more fun. 

If she had to pick one veggie to plant/eat forever, it would be beets for both their fresh greens and preservable roots. And if she had to pick one tool, it would be her cobra hand pick that can dig into rocky soil lifting out the most wedged weeds. 

Dianna and her husband Glenn live on Marrowstone Island where they have been building a life of gardens, greenhouses, and now a new above ground "storage cellar" since May 2004

She can be found online at FoodBankGrowers@gmail.com, or sowing crops and gardening advice at one of our 12 gardens.