Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
- ISBN13: 9781890132279
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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 fr… More >>
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
Eat fresh, home-grown vegetables year round? Eliminate canning and freezing? Do this all at low cost? Eliot Coleman does, you can, too, and here is the how. Coleman is a market gardener in Maine who may eat better than Bill Gates. He shows that sunlight and wind protection are more important that temperature–and, by the way, most of the U.S. gets more winter sunlight than Coleman’s place. Inexpensive, unheated greenhouses that he calls tall tunnel houses–some say hoop houses–and cold frames protect from wind and keep snow off the veggies. Greenhouse comfort is more to benefit the gardener. The key is what and when to plant. Full info given for planting dates, construction details, sources of seeds, tools, greenhouses. Well illustrated. An essential guide for organic gourmands.
Eliot Coleman’s love and deep knowledge of gardening comes through in this easy to read, and easy to use book. I love the idea of a four season harvest, and if he can do it in Maine, then anyone can do it! The book opens the readers mind to the wide spread possibilities that await gardener’s with imagination, an open mind, and the willingness to work at it. He offers ideas for cold frames, row covers and tunnels to extend the season. Good explanations as to how they protect crops. The book also gives a great amount of detail for a wide range of vegetables. Charts provide information on when vegetables can be harvested throughout the year, and offers the reader many vegetables to choose from for a three season harvest, and a fair number for the four season harvest. I would recommend this book to anyone, beginner or experienced gardener!
Coleman is an experienced organic gardener and has written previous books on organic gardening. Whether you are looking for new organic gardening techniques or ways to improve a self-sustaining lifestyle, Coleman’s book will be a valuable resource. He explains how to grow delicious, organically-grown vegetables from your home garden year ’round. Organically-grown vegetables can be harvested throughout the coldest months in all climate zones in the Lower 48 without much extra effort or time. He shows how to design inexpensive, simple cold frames and unheated mobile greenhouses. He explains how to use them along with a root cellar to grow a variety of organic vegetables each suited to their season. Success depends on growing a large variety of vegetables each suited to their season, and in cold frames, mobile greenhouses, and root cellars. Coleman’s book will surely guide the grower to extend the growing season!
I’ve built a few cold frames in north-eastern Massachusetts based on all the latest theories of maximizing and storing solar heat. They didn’t work so well. Then I tried Eliott’s simple cold-frame design and it was in every way superior! He’s not making stuff up to sell a book, this is time-tested and personally tested advice from a master grower. This, and “The New Organic Grower” were my favorite books before I moved South.
I’d wanted this book for a year, and it lived up to the anticipation for a number of reasons. First, there is great detail, so much that you gotta fight off being overwhelmed. This will clearly be a great reference book for many years to come. Second, this isn’t some new invention in farming… it’s something I value even more, the careful collection of old-wisdom and a retraining those of us who have been cut off from the ways of yore. In this case, the author researches growing methods in France and shows us how folk who rely on garden food have long found ways to grow it more effectively.
Cool stuff. Makes me more enthusiastic about winter gardening… and about eating more whole foods.