Winter Harvest will do more to change the way gardeners think than any book since John Jeavons' How to Grow More Vegetables. That book, published more than 30 years ago, popularized the European raised bed intensive methods introduced to America by Alan Chadwick in the 1970s. If you are in doubt about the impact it had, take a look at any community garden today.
Like Jeavons' book, Winter Harvest offers a hungry and increasingly energy-starved world a new (or hitherto overlooked) paradigm for growing food. Whereas Chadwick's emphasis was on deep cultivation and close spacing of plants to maximize crop yields in the available space, Eliot Coleman effectively stretches the growing season over the entire year, even in the frigid Maine climate where he farms. How? By the use of simple unheated greenhouses, with an additional level of cold protection provided by floating row covers that act as a greenhouse within a greenhouse. The combined result: the growing season effectively moves three USDA zones south.
Solar greenhouses gained attention 30 years ago, but those designs incorporated cumbersome features such as thermal mass, double glazing and insulation below the frost line. I recall visiting one such greenhouse around 1978: a massive A-frame designed by engineer Reed Maes and featuring a "water ceiling" consisting of a water-filled polyethylene sleeve suspended near the top of the A-frame to absorb infrared radiation and prevent overheating on sunny days, while serving as thermal mass to re-radiate heat into the interior during sunless periods.
Though the design brought results (I still remember the refreshing sight of trellised tomatoes climbing skyward on a frigid January day), it was costly and still required supplemental heat. Unheated greenhouses, such as that described by Helen and Scott Nearing in their 1977 book, Building and Using our Sun-Heated Greenhouse, provided a year-round harvest of cool-weather crops on a homestead scale.
Eliot Coleman's model takes winter growing a step further. His model couldn't be simpler. No attempt is made to grow warm weather crops in winter. Instead, cold-hardy vegetable like spinach and leeks (and some less familiar ones such as mache, mizuna, and claytonia) are sowed on a meticulously worked out schedule to bring them to harvest throughout the winter months. The greenhouse is a single-glazed hoop house mounted on sled runners so it can be pulled by a tractor over beds sown in the open. Since he is running a commercial operation, Coleman has done everything possible to minimize cost and labor, including the development of specialized tools like the broadfork and the tilther. Vegetables are planted intensively and successive plantings follow relentlessly. The goal is to leave no bed unplanted for more than 24 hours.
Many readers will doubtless be attracted to the presumed health benefits of having fresh local produce year round. Coleman doesn't dwell on this, though he does provide the following interesting tidbit: "According to studies on levels of antioxidants in vegetables, the winter harvest would seem to offer an additional benefit. Highly colored foods grown under cool conditions have been shown to be much higher in anthocyanins, one of the most valuable antioxidants." (page 172)
Winter Harvest is not exactly a how-to book for home gardeners. The system described here has been developed for small-scale commercial market gardens or mini-farms (Coleman and his staff have one and a half acres under cultivation, including about a quarter acre--12,000 square feet--of greenhouse space.) But readers may use their resourcefulness to devise ways of adapting these principles to their own gardens, as I intend to do. For example, the Quick Hoops described in Chapter 11 offer a very simple and inexpensive way to provide one layer of protection.
There is information on growing specific crops. See, for instance, Coleman's method for growing leeks (page 82-84) and advice on tool selection. Appendixes include lists of tool and seed suppliers, climate maps, and sowing dates for fall and winter crops.
The final chapters comprise a thoughtful and thought-provoking essay, including a frank unvarnished assessment of the "organic" food movement as co-opted by industry. Coleman's description of a real food market as it might exist will bring tears to the eyes of those who deplore the lamentable state of our present food supply.
It is not too late to reverse the present direction in which our food system is headed. But the momentum for change will not come from the food establishment, but from innovative pioneers like Eliot Coleman. With the help of this book home gardeners can help lead the way.
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