Reviews
Winter Reading: Eliot Coleman
Submitted by Meghan Shinn
Horticulture Magazine - December 8, 2010
Eliot Coleman is the go-to guy for gardeners who crave information on growing vegetables organically. He draws from years of personal experience to offer practical advice on creating a vegetable garden that’s healthiest for you and for the environment. Among his many accomplishments is Four Season Farm, an experimental market garden he runs with his wife, Barbara Damrosch (author of The Garden Primer).
Coleman shares his advice for growing vegetables year-round—even in Maine—in two books, Four-Season Harvest (1999) and The Winter Harvest Handbook (2009). The latter will guide you through setting up and maintaining an unheated movable plastic greenhouse. Four Season Harvest covers the use of cold frames, plastic tunnels and root cellars as methods to keep you feasting on homegrown produce no matter the season, no matter your region.
Read the original review at HortMag.com.
Foodie Book Recommendations
Eat Drink Better - November 30, 2010
As my last day of farm work approaches, I’m thinking a lot about what books I’ll be reading during my two-month long hibernation before I have to start pruning fruit trees in February.
If you’re also looking for food-related books to read (and cook out of) this winter, here are some of my recommendations.
1. Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables From Your Home Garden All Year Long by Eliot Coleman: My goal is to be able to harvest winter salad greens from my garden by 2012. This book is my guide.
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Read the entire Foodie Book List at Eat Drink Better.
Suggested Reading To Help Prepare For Winter Gardening
Safe Fertilizer Blog
August 9th, 2010
I know to most of us the dead of winter seems very far away…but it’s not. A good gardener is always thinking about the future and what needs done to prepare for it and prepare for the next bountiful harvest. We can never know what the future will hold, so it’s always best to be ready for anything that can be thrown our way–whether it be a very cold, mild, wet, or snowy winter–we need to be ready! I’ve gathered a handful of books that I think any gardener would find helpful in regards to preparing your garden (and yourself) for the winter months:
“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.” –Publisher’s Weekly
Read the whole article here.
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