Four-Season Harvest Review

In a magazine I read an overview on Four-Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman and was intrigued. What does it really take to have fresh vegetables all year round? Having lived in a 4 season area all my life, I am use to a garden cycle of plant in the spring and harvest/preserve in the fall. So I bought the book to see what a four season garden is about. The author uses several different experiences from his trip to France to illustrate different points throughout the book, like eating ‘in-season’, harvesting food from the wild, and microclimates. I have learned several new things from reading this book, for example:

• This is called harvest for a reason. The plants used in four season gardening are planted in fall to be harvested in winter. The growing season requires heat, but harvesting does not.
• The reason he goes to France is because it is on the same latitude as his home in Maine, which means it will have the same amount of daylight. The amount of daylight is very important when deciding what plants to grow.
• The smell of a compost indicates a problem. There are a few suggestions to fix these problems in order to get a rich, dark, “well humified” compost.
• You can find a warm microclimate within 5-6 feet of a masonry wall or create a wind break to protect plants up to 6 times the height of the break.
• Using the slope of a hill facing south, or creating a slope, greatly improves the sun’s soil warming effects.
• There are many different ways to keep your plants warm, even in extreme cold, without needing to use heating elements or a permanent greenhouse.

And there are many other new and great ideas throughout the book. It is  clear the author has a lot of experience gardening at his home in Maine. It is important to realize though, the entire book is based on his experience in Maine. If you do not live in a similar area, or have extra land like the author does, there will be a lot of information irrelevant to your situation. For example, we don’t have extra land, so much of what he says for garden planning does not work for us. His techniques are not for small space gardening. Sure we can still use some of the suggestions given, like ideas for crop rotation, but we will have to do it on a much smaller scale. Also, there is an obvious preference for fresh food over canning the harvest in the fall, but I will still be happy to save our summer harvest in cans.

The book can be slow at times, especially in the beginning. There are several ‘stories’ from the author’s trip to France, which he uses to demonstrate different ideas like microclimates, composting, and eating in-season. These stories are good at showing readers that the concept of continually growing and harvesting has been around for a long time. If stories aren’t you’re thing though, you might not enjoy reading this book.

If you’re just looking for garden tunnel ideas, what plants to plant when, material requirements, and other similar information, it is also here. There are plans for very simple frames, to full walk in size frames. The author likes these for their simple, cost effective design, but really the amount of work and cost will depend on what you already have vs. what you buy.

Overall I really like this book. Mostly it has given me lots of new ideas on how I can extend our growing season much more. We probably won’t be using all the suggestions, but it definitely is a good place to start from.