The Winter Harvest Handbook

by Eliot Coleman
Chelsea Green Publishers

Review by Angie Sullivan, high tunnel grower:

Winter Harvest Handbook is Eliot Coleman’s latest book on season extension. This book gives us a look at how he accomplishes year-round vegetable production using deep-organic techniques and unheated greenhouses, in Maine.

This book is a combination of his prior efforts, The New Organic Grower and The Winter Harvest Manual, all in a concise, neat, well-organized format with beautiful color pictures.

As a high-tunnel farmer, I like a book with complete information so I don’t have to research 2 or 3 books to find what I’m looking for. Other than the fact that on Mr. Coleman’s farm, money is no object and is large scale, unlike most of us, you can glean from his ideas and are able to break it down to your scale and budget. His basic information has nothing to do with money and has proven time and again to be solid, useful and basic information that is very helpful when you are trying to grow vegetables in an unheated hoop-house.

If you’re wondering what ‘deep organic’ means, he explains this philosophy and way of farming in Chapter 20. Personally, I found this chapter informative. With all the debate about “to certify or not to certify”, he gives some good perspective.