Eliot has over 30 years experience in all aspects of organic farming, including field vegetables, greenhouse vegetables, rotational grazing of cattle and sheep, and range poultry. He is the author of The New Organic Grower (Chelsea Green, 1989, revised, expanded second edition, 1995), Four Season Harvest (Chelsea Green, 1992, revised, expanded second edition, 1999) and The Winter Harvest Manual. He has contributed chapters to three scientific books on organic agriculture and has written extensively on the subject since 1975. He also wrote the foreward to Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques and Recipes (1999), by the gardeners and farmers of Terre Vivant. During his careers as a commercial market gardener, the director of agricultural research projects, and as a teacher and lecturer on organic gardening he has studied, practiced and perfected his craft. He served for two years as the Executive Director of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements and was an advisor to the US Department of Agriculture during their landmark 1979-80 study, Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming. He has conducted study tours of organic farms, market gardens, orchards, and vineyards in Europe and has successfully combined European ideas with his own to develop and popularize a complete system of tools and equipment for organic vegetable growers. He shares that expertise through his lectures and writings, and has served as a tool consultant to a number of companies. He presently consults and designs tools for Johnny's Selected Seeds. With his wife Barbara Damrosch, he was the host of the TV series Gardening Naturally on The Learning Channel. He and Barbara presently operate a commercial year-round market garden, in addition to horticultural research projects, at Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine. For more information visithttp://fourseasonfarm.com
Publishers Weekly-
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.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of
this title.
"Four-Season Harvest is a magnificent work. It's enticing,
inspiring, sensible, and it opens a whole new world for the home
grower."--Peter Fossel, Country Journal
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