Eliot Coleman, Four Season Harvest: Book Review

Four Season Harvest: Front Cover

Eliot Coleman: Four Season Harvest – Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long. Revised & updated edition.

Chelsea Green Publishing, 1999. Paperback 234pp

Four Season Harvest is a book about “extending the harvest season not the growing season”. In the words of Coleman’s wife Barbara Damrosch in the Foreword: “It’s about gardening and eating in a manner appropriate to each season”. These are sentiments close to my own values to use food that is fresh, seasonal and local. This was one of the first books we bought on this subject and it has stood the test of time against newer publications.

Eliot Coleman is a leading proponent of organic gardening and farming as well as being an author. He advocates working with nature and the soil using simple and effective techniques. He lives and gardens in Maine, [state], USA. This is an edition of his 1992 book revised in 1999 after a research trip to France. There Coleman & Damrosch ‘re-discovered’ knowledge of year-round growing and harvesting from French gardeners. This edition contains great advice and inspiration from this source. The story of their French trip unfolds wonderfully throughout the book and is an inspiration.

Four Season Harvest: great illustrationsFour Season Harvest is well designed and laid out in two column format. Kathy Bray’s black & white illustrations are beautiful and helpful. There is a colour inset section in the middle of the book which contains useful photographs taken by Damrosch.

In the first two Chapters Coleman makes the case for the all year round harvest. He advocates not just that you extend the summer harvest into late-autumn, but that you should plant cold tolerant crops too. He usefully explains how your latitude, day length and temperature will affect what will germinate and grow. He then outlines how to begin to create a productive garden that is also a place for you to live and work in happily.

In the next three chapters Coleman takes you through making compost to feed your garden, how to assess, plan and prepare your plot and where to source seeds from both conventional and ‘alternative’ sources.

Four Season Harvest: informative tablesHe then explains how to do outdoor gardening and suggests ways to use ducks as garden helpers. He describes the contribution of covered gardening if you use greenhouses, polytunnels, cold frames and cloches. These contain detailed explanations and he delivers lots of useful advice and experience. He includes a number of useful tables to help with planting and cropping dates and sequences.

Chapter 11 is a really useful chapter about the ‘Indoor Harvest’. He tells you about how to store root crops in cellars or clamps and producing shoot harvests by ‘forcing’ vegetables. He also gives some basic information about how to dehydrate your produce to preserve it.

In Chapter 12 he explains about what he calls ‘Balanced Gardening’: methods using organic principles and polyculture.

Four Season Harvest: plant guideThe four Appendices are a mine of useful information. Appendix A gives extensive details for a range of plants how to plant, cultivate, harvest and store them. Appendix B contains resources about climate and temperature. The last two appendices discuss the ecological impact of plastic in the garden and gives information about sources of supply and tools. There is an extensive Bibliography and comprehensive index.

The prose is clear and the descriptive passages evoke and emote his love of his garden and of the French gardens. This book is clearly a distillation of many years careful and thoughtful study around the world. Coleman writes mainly from a United States perspective but there is good data for Western Europe. I think there is enough information for the knowledge to translate well to other parts of the world.

This is a book that we continue to go back to for reference and inspiration year after year. I don’t think it is so comprehensive that it should be the only text on your bookshelf on this subject. I do, however, think it’s an essential read.

Four Season Harvest: colour picture section


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8 responses to “Eliot Coleman, Four Season Harvest: Book Review”

  1. Bren in Nova Scotia, Canada Avatar
    Bren in Nova Scotia, Canada

    I own this book and it is well used, and rather shabby right now because of it’s value to me. It was my go to book before Niki Jabbour wrote The Year Round Vegetable Gardener published early 2012 by Storey. I use that more now, as the layout works better for me when I need a quick answer. Photos are fantastic also. Both, I would highly recommend. Great review Carl.

    1. Carl Avatar
      Carl

      Hi Bren. Thanks very much for the comment and for letting me know about Niki’s book which I’ll look out.

      I did an canoe expedition through the Tobeatic Wilderness & Keji Park in 2007 and love Nova Scotia. Some very good time there with spectacular scenery & wildlife 🙂

  2. Ray Avatar

    You may like Elisabeth Luard’s “A cook’s year in a Welsh farmhouse” also

    1. Carl Avatar
      Carl

      Ray, the book looks just great, very much my sort of thing indeed. My wallet is screaming 😀 I very much appreciate the heads up on that, diolch yn fawr 🙂

      1. Ray Avatar

        Croeso 🙂

        1. VP Avatar

          I haven’t got that one, but I have some of her other books. Highly recommended 🙂

  3. VP Avatar

    Thanks for this Carl 🙂

    You’ve not only helped to extend my Salad Challenge resources for those joining in over the pond, you’ve also answered the question I had on whether it’s useful for readers over here too.

    1. Carl Avatar
      Carl

      My pleasure Michelle, glad to help and it’s a book that many people will find useful I’m sure 🙂