The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
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The Winter harvest Handbook caught my eye because we are moving back to Colorado after four years in Mexico. We’ve been growing year-round in our organic garden beds in Mexico, but the frost-free season at eight thousand feet is not that long! Luckily, the house that we bought already has a solar greenhouse attached, so we’ll have a good start. I see that Eliot Coleman is from Maine, so he has got to know a lot about cold weather gardening!
- ISBN13: 9781603580816
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine.
Now, with his long-awaited new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook, anyone can have access to his hard-won experience. Gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.
Building on the techniques that hundreds of thousands of farmers and gardeners adopted from The New Organic Grower and Four-Season Harvest, this new book focuses on growing produce of unparalleled freshness and quality in customized unheated or, in some cases, minimally heated, movable plastic greenhouses.
Coleman offers clear, concise details on greenhouse construction and maintenance, planting schedules, crop management, harvesting practices, and even marketing methods in this complete, meticulous, and illustrated guide. Readers have access to all the techniques that have proven to produce higher-quality crops on Coleman’s own farm.
His painstaking research and experimentation with more than 30 different crops will be valuable to small farmers, homesteaders, and experienced home gardeners who seek to expand their production seasons.
A passionate advocate for the revival of small-scale sustainable farming, Coleman provides a practical model for supplying fresh, locally grown produce during the winter season, even in climates where conventional wisdom says it “just can’t be done.”
Even though much of this book is geared toward the commercial grower rather than the home grower like myself, it contains a lot of useful information for someone, like myself, interested in growing crops year around in an unheated greenhouse.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
I had so much to learn, but I knew I wanted to grow vegetables when they weren’t traditionally supposed to be growing. The Winter Harvest Handbook taught me how the shortened days of winter affect growing and ways I can use artificial lighting to provide more “daylight” hours. I learned about the option of heating the soil. I had asked my expert-gardener neighbors, “Do the plants really know what season it is?” I made it my goal to convince them it was growing season with the help of this handbook. I can see that a more experienced gardener or those with more land to plant will be more interested in topics related to their projects. I stuck with the topics I could use in my new greenhouse and my new cold frame, which I haven’t used yet. I’ve been enjoying the greenhouse. Right now I have spinach, Romaine lettuce, radishes (although I timidly didn’t plant enough of those), tomatoes (which I’m learning to pollinate without the assistance of bees since they aren’t available), squash, and lots of onions and garlic. The handbook taught me which vegetables tolerate colder conditions and those that can make it in cooler (not cold) conditions. I’ll soon be ready to try out the cold-frame and Not not as timid as I was when I started. It’s really tough forcing myself to harvest my vegetables though. I love to watch them growing and thriving in my garden, EVEN THROUGH THE OKLAHOMA BLIZZARD OF Christmas Day, 2009.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
If you’re the type that gets a tad depressed when you’re bringing in your final harvest of brussel sprouts, carrots and beets, beat those winter blues with some year-round gardening now possible under the tutelage of Mr. Coleman. First the authority on organic gardening, Eliot is now the authority on year round gardening. If you think your climate is too harsh, think again and flip through the pages of Eliot harvesting veggies with snow covered hills in the background. We can’t wait to get started!
Rating: 5 / 5
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
Would-be winter gardeners will find great ideas for growing crops year-round using such devices as unheated greenhouses and/or row covers. For those who are not familiar with Coleman, they can be assured that his advice is pertinant and ahead of most thinking. Whether a large farming operation or a backyard garden, this is a book gauranteed to be of interest for those who wish to simplify their tasks and enjoy year-round production. Get off the couch this winter and grow!
Rating: 5 / 5
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
This book is geared toward small-acreage (less than 5 acres) vegetable growers who wish to explore season extension and winter production. If you fit that description, you *have* to get this book, period.
The writing and style is very similar to The New Organic Grower (TNOG). The prose is good, the attitude always positive. It’s Coleman as we know him. As usual, he provide ample references through the book, which I find most useful.
I do not have much to add to all the positive reviews that have been posted already, except to say that the quality of this book is very good. The color photographies peppered throughout are gorgeous and inspiring, the paper used is of excellent weight and texture, the binding and cover are solid. It’s a beautiful book. This is a net improvement over TNOG, which was rather drab in term of presentation.
This book earned a permanent location on my bookshelf right beside TNOG.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses