Four-Season Harvest: How to Harvest Fresh Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long [Paperback]

Eliot Coleman (Author), Kathy Bary (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

Eliot Coleman shows the home gardener how to escape the confines of the growing season in chapters on compost, planning and preparing the outdoor garden, planting and cultivating, cold frames, tunnel greenhouses, root cellars, and growing winter greens indoors.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Review

"Four-Season Harvest is a magnificent work. It's enticing, inspiring, sensible, and it opens a whole new world for the home grower."--Peter Fossel, Country Journal --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0930031571
• ISBN-13: 978-0930031572
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #955,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

296 of 300 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential guide for organic gourmands, October 27, 1999

By 

GENE GERUE "Author, Find Your Ideal Country Home" (Zanoni, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long (Paperback)

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.

166 of 169 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I recommend this for anyone who hates to see the season end!, December 28, 1999

By 

Terry (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Four-Season Harvest: How to Harvest Fresh Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long (Paperback)

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!

65 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grow vegetables year 'round!, February 26, 2006

By 

Robert A. Williams "libertarian" (Oberlin, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long (Paperback)

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!