The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses

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.

I love this book. It has all the information I needed about extending my season as well as fabulous planting tips. It is very well organized and clearly written. The author has been meticulous in documenting what worked in his gardening practice over decades. I am in love with this book.

In the depths of winter, there may be no better "read" for an enthusiastic backyard gardener than a book about year-round vegetable production, and The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman is the king of books on year-round vegetable growing. This is a long review, so here's the main point in case you don't have time to read more: Coleman is the master of "using deep-organic techniques and unheated greenhouses for year-round vegetable production." He surprises the reader by showing how to grow vegetables, or at least extend the harvest season, with no external heat source during Maine's cold winters. Most gardening enthusiasts will read the cover and want to know: How does he do that? I did. If you want to know more about this book, read more of my review. Maybe the most astounding point in the Handbook is that you can magically transport your garden 500 miles, or three USDA zones, to the south by adding a hoop house and row covers. The guiding principles of Coleman's Handbook are "simplicity, low external input, and high quality output's." That's another way of saying food production should be easy, inexpensive, healthy and flavorful, which is in line with the premise of the Suburban Hobby Farmer blog. Based on his inspiration and some of his principles, I made my first attempt at cold house gardening this year. Using a very small, hand-made hoop house and an inexpensive cold frame I had purchased a year earlier, I grew lettuce, arugula, radishes and beats in my southern New Hampshire backyard. The arugula came out best. Followed by the radishes. I had much more difficulty with the others, probably because I didn't follow some of Coleman's key points. My big mistake was not picking a raised bed that got enough sun in the winter months. The one I selected got plenty of sun in late spring and summer, but not enough sun in the late fall and winter. But the arugula I grew was pretty interesting. When you put it in your mouth and began chewing it, the taste started off buttery and a little bit sweet. But at the very end, just before you swallowed it, the taste grew very strong, almost bitter. It was like no salad green I had tasted before. Certainly, it was more flavorful any other salad green I had grown - even when compared to the arugula from the same seeds grown in late spring. I wouldn't say it was the best I've grown, but it amazed me that growing the same plant at a different time of year could result in such taste difference. Coleman grows arugula, but also radishes, turnips, turnip greens, Swiss chard, watercress, and parsley in the cool house during the winter months. In order to be successful with most of his crops, he carefully times his plantings because most crops must reach a certain minimum size before the day length drops below the 10-hour mark. In other words, timing is very important if you want to successfully harvest in winter. Backyard gardeners may be put off by Coleman's exacting and detail-oriented nature. After all, he is a professional farmer and not a backyard gardener. For example, he takes extreme pleasure in getting his tools just right. "Stop considering the tool you have [as] a finished product [but] rather consider it as a point of departure." This may go too far for some of Suburban Hobby Farmer's readers. If you're the kind of hobbyist that throws a few seeds in the ground, adds store bought compost and waters when needed, this book is not for you. Keep in mind, gardening in the cold of late fall and winter is no day at the beach. You have to really enjoyed it to be out there when the mercury dips below 50°. But wow! Fresh salad in January. My guess is some of you will want to try. The bottom line is if you use what Coleman has learned to extend your growing season a month earlier in spring and a month later in fall, it's well worth the price of the paperback in terms of enjoyment, health and maybe even savings on vegetables. Finally, Coleman has the right spirit for readers of the Suburban Hobby Farmer blog. He says "Farmers should always share ideas with each other."

I thought this book was incredible, but unfortunately it was not exactly what I was looking for. Eliot Coleman is extremely knowledgeable when it comes to deep organic farming and winter farming. I was impressed by how well researched the book is, and how much practical experience the author has. It gets into a great deal of detail on the history of winter farming techniques, as well as what the author has learned on his own farm. There is information on crop rotation, planting/harvest schedules, etc. The book actually left me feeling more inspired to garden in the winter. I was looking for a basic instructional book aimed at the home gardener. Just as one example, I would have liked more specific information on how to build and use Dutch lights or hoop houses to protect my plants, as opposed to information on how to build tracks to move large greenhouses around a farm. I'm not nearly competent enough to make real use of this book!

Readers will learn from this book at their own level of understanding. I'm a novice, so I'll be going back for more as I mature as a vegetable gardener, even though I've got a GREENHOUSE FULL OF VEGETABLES AND THIS IS JANUARY! I had (still have) 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 (everyone else probably already knew that but I had to read it to understand it) and ways I can use artificial lighting to provide more "daylight" hours. I learned about the option of heating the soil. That method is too advanced for me, but others were just what I needed. I am heating the soil for the seeds I'm sowing. I had asked my expert-gardener neighbors, "Do the plants really know what season it is?" <grin> They assured me that they didn't. I made it my goal to convince the seeds/seedlings I plant that it is growing season. I accomplished that with the help of this handbook among others. 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 only have so much courage and can only try so many new things at a time. EDITED to say that I did try to use mine. I had given my neighbor one and he used his to produce a good crop of radishes. I tried to use mine, but the wind moved the soil around so much that the carrot seeds I sowed never sprouted. This may not be the location for a cold frame, but it's a good idea for tamer regions. I've been enjoying my new greenhouse, formerly a screened-in porch, now enclosed with plexiglass and full of growing vegetables--in January! 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. A couple of days ago I discovered a cucumber plant which looks like it needs pollination. [EDITED to come back weeks later and say that I successfully pollinated it and it is now a tiny little cucumber and there are more on the way.] Back to reading to find out exactly how it works with cucumbers when there are no bees around. My greenhouse may not be warm enough to bring that little cucumber to harvest, [EDITED to say that it worked!!!] but {shrug} the other vegetables are, with the exception of the tomatoes that are going that direction and have blossomed, I've hand-pollinated them, and I'm still waiting to see tomatoes, but it's looking good for them too! Romaine lettuce and LOTS of spinach are the stars out there! They are growing with little effort on my part. [EDITED to say that I have dozens of little green cherry tomatoes on my tomato bush now. This is awesome! I had no idea gardening could be so much fun. Where have I been? Oh yes, working, and no time for much of anything but work. This is better.] 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.

first off, i have only a small area i can cultivate, basically in ground pots and a fence row, so i am not a "serious" gardner, and i won't be able to have a greenhouse. however, i hope to have a land of my own someday so i am laying out my plans.. i started off reading the One Straw Revolution. i then bought The Winter Harvest Handbook by coleman, Gaia's Garden by hemenway, and Perrenial Vegetables by toensmeier. i live in the same climate zone as eliot coleman. i have a close friend who has a small organic commercial garden. i gave her a copy of The Winter Harvest Handbook as a present. she and i both found so much useful information in eliot's book. he has found a niche market for specialty veggies for local restaurants and stores. his methods are very practical and he places a high value on ease of operation, use of available space, creative making of tools, flexible greenhouses, and packing/display boxes. he is an actual full time farmer who has a commercially viable operation. my friend, cindy, is already using some of eliot's ideas. she participates in local farmer's markets. our part of the country has some of the highest unemployment at this time, so we have to be creative to survive. i plan to try a tomato trellis this year, which is an idea from eliot's book. i also interspersed jerusalem artichokes with sunflowers along the fence this year because the deer eat the sunflowers when they are young, but evidently don't like jerusalem artichokes. the tubers are quite edible. i found that info in Perrenial Vegetables. i find mr. coleman's book to be very well written, easy to understand, well illustrated with photos, and inspiring. this is the first book i have read by the author, although he is a well known and respected author in the field of permaculture and small farm agribusiness.

In 2006 I planted my first fall garden. The first week of September I sowed one of my grow beds in Indian Summer Spinach and a few other recommendations from an article I read about fall gardens. I was amazed at the productivety from this late planting. The quality and quantity was wonderful, and the absense of pests and weeds was noteworthy. To my astonishment I kept harvesting and enjoying spinach first to Thanksgiving, and then into December. When the first snow fall blanketed the foothills where I live the day before Christmas I thought it was all over. New Years was a clear sunny winter day and so I slipping on my snow boots and wondered out to the garden. There I noticed a little dark green peeking out from the edge of the grow bed in I which I had planted the fall spinach. Gently I lifted away the crusty layer of snow and was astounded to find the spinach still florishing. Reaching down I sampled the crunchiest, sweetest spinach I had ever tasted, before returning to the house for a large bowl. The salad that day from our own garden was devine. I picked almost daily until, with a little melancoly, I harvested the last of it on January 20, 2007. That expience led me to wonder what else might be grown in the fall and winter months, and how it could best be accomplished. If you have ever put together a jigsaw puzzle only to find a piece or two missing just as you were completing it,that's how I felt in reverse. I had the missing piece or two, but didn't know where the rest of the puzzle was until just last month when I discovered Eliot Coleman's extraordinary book The Winter Harvest Handbook. Now I have the whole puzzle. But in his humble way I can almost hear Eliot say, "There are still lots of things we need to learn about the winter garden." If you are passionate about growing quality vegetables for your own table or for the market, and want to extend your efforts into the wonderful world of the Winter Harvest I hardily recommend this gift from the master of that season. My only comments for the 3rd edition would be to add more information about watering/irrigation in winter and specific information about seed varieties and their sources. I was so impressed with this book that I am now "plowing" through Coleman's The New Organic Grower.

This book set covers a lot, and would be a great resource to anyone who wants to do some serious year-round growing in cool climates. I chose this set, which came with two DVDs, because I saw a clip on YouTube of the talk the author gives on one of the DVDs. It sounded good, but the publisher's website wanted a fortune for the set. This price of $62 was much more reasonable. I paid for overnight shipping late in the day, and I still had it the next day. Impressive! The talk on the first DVD was really interesting. Unfortunately, somehow I lost the little DVD folder along with the second DVD, (don't ask me how, lol) so I can't review the second disk. However, I'm pleased with this purchase. I wish I'd gotten it last year, so I could have grown greens over the winter. One thing I should mention: although there is plenty of info here for the casual home gardener, he does spend a lot of time talking about market gardening, just so you know. Also, some reviewers complained in reviews for the book (not the set) that he only wrote about cold weather gardening, and it wasn't much use for people in southern states. Um...duh. That's the whole point of the book. I mean, who needs help in learning how to garden year-round...Floridians? LOL No, people up north. Seriously--some people need to read the blurbs more carefully before buying books and giving it a negative review! So here's my advice--if you live near the equator, this book isn't for you. ;-) If you live where it snows, and you want fresh salads in the winter time (to eat or to sell), BUY IT! 'nuff said.

Eine Fundgrube wichtiger und interessanter Informationen rund um das Anbauen und Ernten im Winter auf organischer Basis. Auch ein guter Abriss über die historischen Vorbilder - Coleman hat nicht erfunden, sondern weiterentwickelt. Insgesamt ein kurzweiliger Lesegenuss für alle Selbstversorger mit vielen nachzuschlagenden Infos. Uneingeschränkte Kaufempfehlung. Zusammen mit Seymours Selbstversorgung, natürlich.

All the new and upcoming organic farmers have referred to Eliot in their books. This alone speaks volumes. I have everything he’s written. for good reason.

Sa vision de la culture maraîchère me semble des plus nourrissantes! Un pragmatisme somme toute très philosophique et très efficace, simple à réaliser. Même si tout le monde n'est pas disposé à s'investir dans un travail aussi considérable, j'y ai trouvé des idées très simples à utiliser dans mon jardin.

The narrator was easy to enjoy learning from, the information was new to me, I'm a summer gardener and I have only recently learned that winter gardening is a real thing people do. I read this book imagining keeping my garden going all winter, it was hard to wipe the smile off my face.

Buen libro. Explica muchos detalles. Lo recomiendo