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: #12126 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-01
• Original language: English
• 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.

Ingram
Shows home gardeners how to grow and harvest up to forty different vegetables in season all year round by using cold frames, mobile greenhouses, high-quality compost, and other simple and inexpensive tools and techniques.

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. To learn more about the possibility of a four-season farm, please visit Coleman's website www.fourseasonfarm.com

Customer Reviews

Cold hardy winter vegetables
It is probably not easy writing a second book on a similar subject.I read and reviewed Eliot Coleman's first book on Organic Gardening.And as you can read in that first review,I just loved that book.The second book,I would have called "Cold Hardy Winter Vegetables",rather than the Four-Season Harvest.
Of course there is a list for growing vegetables all year round.But apart from the list what one can grow during the colder season,it is just pretty much a recapitulation of the first work Coleman put on paper.
So I still give this book 4 Stars.Because if you have not read his first one,then of course it would be a great book.

The author is too self involved - not enough real info
After seeing the book here on Amazon I thought I wanted it. While looking for another book at the local library I found this book in it's revised and updated edition. I was sadly disappointed. It is more a travellog than a how-to on gardening. I read several other similar books and the best one I found was "Solar Gardening" by Leandre Poisson from Chelsea Green.

A must own for anyone gardening up north
This book is really wonderful. I've owned it for several years and have also had reliable winter harvests in Maine (where I used to live). It has also really expanded my awareness of good things to eat fresh from my garden.

Coleman presents his ideas clearly and with plenty of pictures. This is really critical. Using the diagrams in the book, I was easily able to build a cold frame from scrap board. No mean feat, as I am not the most accomplished builder.

The only drawback to the book, which is pretty minor, is the size of the hardiness zone map in the back. I would have much preferred it to be larger and in color.