Product Description

If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you. Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine.
This story of sunshine, weather patterns, old limitations and expectations, and new realities is delightfully innovative in the best gardening tradition. Four-Season Harvest will have you feasting on fresh produce from your garden all through the winter.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1466 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 236 pages

From Publishers Weekly
From first sentence to last, Coleman's ( The New Organic Gardener ) book is a delight--an earnest guide written with an impish sense of humor. It will refresh anyone who wants to get the most from a vegetable garden yet doesn't want to devote too much time and energy to the process. Apparently Coleman thoroughly enjoys every phase of gardening--from planting crops to weeding. Who else has ever suggested, only half in jest, dancing with a hoe? Or keeping a pair of ducks for pest patrol? This is that kind of book. It's also a book full of valuable information on how to harvest fresh vegetables and salad ingredients literally year-round--yet without an expensive greenhouse or indoor light garden set-up. Coleman combines succession planting (small sowings three or more times, rather than one big endeavor) with cold-frame growing in the winter months. He includes how-tos for building simple cold-frames. Given the fact that he lives in Maine, his advice seems all the more reliable. He believes in simplicity ("If what I am doing in the garden seems complicated, it is probably wrong"), seasonality (tomatoes in summer, broccoli in fall, mache in February) and diplomacy in the garden (which "has more to teach us than just how to grow food"). Here, his philosophy of organic growing is shared easily. The book concludes with an extensive chapter on the vegetables that comprise his "cast of characters." Illustrated.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Eliot Coleman is one of America's leading practitioners of organic gardening and farming. He has pioneered a "plant-positive" approach to horticulture that surpasses chemical-dependent agriculture in every way—producing vegetables that are exceptionally nutritious, delicious, and healthy. His Chelsea Green books include The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest. With his wife Barbara Damrosch he farms in Harborside, Maine, on land that was part of the homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing.

Customer Reviews

Good Book for a class and resource
I needn't lament on all the qualities. It has been done enough by others. I read it once, now reading it again. It is packed full of information and will remain close by as a valued reference book.

I look forward to my first winter vegetable garden in part due to this book.

Educational, But You Have to Like Bitter Greens
I did learn alot about the gardening geographical similarities between the US and Europe as well how the gulf stream affects the climates. However, in North Carolina, I think the climate may be too warm? in the winter for some of the winter greens he has suggested to grow. I tried Arugula, Endives, and some other winter greens for the first time this winter (inspired by reading this book). We had some warm spells that may have made them taste bitter, but it's possible I just don't like them. I don't know. I would suggest this book for Virginia and points north for real world application. In North Carolina it seems that Brocolli and carrots are the best winter crops for me. They were soo sweet this winter. A good book for the reference library though.

Inspirational!
I love this book. It inspires with it's adroit mix of low-tech in an informed, high-tech world. Nope, not a return to the past, but the good past informs and points the way to an unexpectedly lush future. Gardening by latitude? Year-round harvests in MAINE?

Particularly interesting to me is the fresh look of self-sufficient gardening when you harvest just what you need to eat, when you need it, instead of giant harvests for canning and freezing. It makes the entire process fit more comfortably into an ordinary life... exactly what I was looking for. No heroics, lots of common sense.

I'll be using this book a lot!