REAL FARMER CARE - Support self-care for farmers.
READ ELIOT & BARBARA'S
BOOKS
A lasting legacy of growing and kitchen garden education. ​
{ CLICK ON THE BOOK TO LEARN MORE }
A LIFE IN THE GARDEN
Tales and Tips for Growing Food in Every Season
One of America’s most well-known and bestselling gardening writers shares her reflections and advice on finding joy in the garden.
In A Life in the Garden, horticultural icon Barbara Damrosch imparts a lifetime of wisdom on growing food for herself and her family. In writing that’s accessible, engaging, and elegant, she welcomes us to garden alongside her. Personal, thoughtful, and often humorous, this book offers practical DIY insights that will delight gardeners, cooks, and small-scale farmers. With a personal and sometimes irreverent tone, Barbara expresses the pleasure she takes in gardening, the sense of empowerment she finds in it, and the importance of a partnership with the real expert: nature.
​
​
“Barbara Damrosch has saved from extinction the art of the personal essay. Not since Charles Lamb have we had such enjoyable reading. She makes kitchen gardening an imaginative experience.” —Daniel Hoffman, 22nd United States Poet Laureate.
​
“The Queen of organic growing . . . a human search engine when it comes to questions about gardening and cooking.” —Heidi Julavits, The New York Times Style Magazine
​
“This is a wonderfully informed how-to guide on nearly every aspect of backyard veggie growing, though it’s cleverly disguised as simply a leisurely stroll through the garden.” —Booklist
THE NEW ORGANIC GROWER
A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener
(Third Edition)
​
The Book that Started the Organic Farming Revolution – 30th Anniversary
Since its original publication in 1989, The New Organic Grower has been one of the most important farming books available, with pioneer Eliot Coleman leading the charge in the organic movement in the United States. Now fully illustrated and updated, this 30th Anniversary Edition is a must-have for any agricultural library.
Eliot Coleman’s books and innovative methods have helped innumerable organic farmers build successful farms in deep accordance with nature. The wisdom in this seminal book holds true even as the modern agricultural canon has grown—in large part due to Coleman’s influence as a wise elder with decades of experience. New information has been included in this edition to showcase the new tools and techniques that Eliot has been developing over the last thirty-five years.
​
Inspired by the European intensive growers, The New Organic Grower, 30th Anniversary Edition, offers a very approachable and productive form of farming that has proven to work well for the earth and its stewards for centuries. Gardeners working on 2.5 acres or less will find this book especially useful, as it offers proof that small-scale market growers and serious home gardeners can live good lives close to the land and make a profit at the same time. The New Organic Grower is ideal for young farmers just getting started, or gardeners seeking to expand into a more productive enterprise.
​
New material in this edition includes:
-
Beautiful color photographs throughout, taken by master gardener and author Barbara Damrosch (Eliot’s wife and co-farmer)
-
Updated information throughout on how Eliot’s practices have changed through his experiments over the years
-
A new section from Damrosch about incorporating flowers on the small farm
-
More information on new tools Eliot has invented that don’t appear in any of his other books
​
​
“Every small-scale grower and serious gardener should have a copy.”
- Robert Rodale, Rodale Press
​
“I know of no other person who can produce better results on the land with an economy of effort and means than Eliot. He has transformed gardening from a task, to a craft, and finally to what Stewart Brand would call ‘local science’.”
- Paul Hawken, best-selling author and entrepreneur
​
THE WINTER HARVEST HANDBOOK
Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. 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 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. 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.”
​
​
“Congratulations on another volume of useful, practical, sensible, and enlightening information.” - Martha Stewart
​
“How do you produce first-rate food all year-round in northern places? This is the big question facing the local food movement, and Eliot Coleman, one of America’s most innovative farmers, has come up with excellent answers….The Winter Harvest Handbook is an indispensable contribution.” - Michael Pollan
​
“In chapters covering everything from The Yearly Schedule and Greenhouse Design to Weed Control and Marketing, Coleman tracks his own constant search for perfection, a quality that has led more than one young farmer to exclaim ‘I’d follow him anywhere.’ Well worth reading even if you don’t grow vegetables, just to watch a master’s mind at work.” - Joan Dye Gussow, author of This Organic Life
THE GARDEN PRIMER
The Completely Revised Gardener's Bible (Second Edition)
The most comprehensive, entertaining, down-to-earth one-volume gardening reference ever. Remarkably complete, this is the one: the indispensable one-volume reference guide to gardening simply, beautifully, and well. It’s jam-packed with useful information, old-fashioned common sense, and a lifetime-worth of experience, and is thoroughly revised and expanded throughout to be 100 percent organic in its recommendations.
​
Updated with the latest on plants, soils, tools, and techniques, it covers everything, including:
-
The basics of landscaping, with an emphasis on sustainable methods.
-
A guide through the nursery jungle. Understanding what plants need and avoiding complex rules and unnecessary formulas.
-
How to choose and combine flowers for season-long color, setting the foundation with perennials and accenting with annuals.
-
Extending the season – that’s right, harvest carrots in January.
-
The secret to raising roses without fuss, lawns without excess needs, vines with discipline and trees that will enhance your property.
-
New information on native species, new sources for plants and gear, new and more efficient techniques, and new innovative tools.
-
Complete instructions for growing and tending approximately 370 plants.
-
More than 500 illustrations, easy-to-read diagrams, and design plans for all types of gardens and landscapes.
​
“An extraordinarily comprehensive guide.” - San Francisco Chronicle
​
“A fine introduction to horticulture.” - The New York Times
​
“Covers just about everything you could think of, and then some.” - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
​
“Best of the crop.” - House Beautiful
​
THE FOUR SEASON FARM GARDENER'S COOKBOOK
From the Garden to the Table in
120 Recipes
Eating doesn’t get any more local than your own backyard. The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook is two books in one, a gardening guide and cookbook.
​
1. A step-by-step garden guide that works no matter how small your plot. We cover the basics, from soil to harvest, and teach you our four decades worth of time-saving tricks to make gardening easier and more successful. This includes size of the garden, nourishing the soil, planning ahead, and the importance of rotating crops―yes, even in your backyard. And, at the core, individual instructions on the crops, from the hardy and healthful cabbage family to fourteen essential culinary herbs.
​
2. A four-season cookbook with 120 recipes from Barbara, from Stuffed Squash Blossom Fritters to Red Thai Curry with Fall Vegetables and Hazelnut Torte with Summer Berries. We show you how to turn your garden’s bounty into great meals, using simple recipes that can be adapted to whatever’s in season.
​
FOUR-SEASON HARVEST
Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long
(Second Edition)
If you love the joys of eating home-garden vegetables but always thought those joys had to stop at the end of summer, this book is for you. Eliot Coleman introduces the surprising fact that most of the United States has more winter sunshine than the south of France. He shows how North American gardeners can successfully use that sun to raise a wide variety of traditional winter vegetables in backyard cold frames and plastic covered tunnel greenhouses without supplementary heat. Coleman expands upon his own experiences with new ideas learned on a winter-vegetable pilgrimage across the ocean to the acknowledged kingdom of vegetable cuisine, the southern part of France, which lies on the 44th parallel, the same latitude as his farm in Maine.
​
This story of sunshine, weather patterns, old limitations and expectations, and new realities is delightfully innovative in the best gardening tradition. Four-Season Harvest will have you feasting on fresh produce from your garden all through the winter.
​
​
“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
​
“From first sentence to last, Coleman’s 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.... 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.” - Publisher’s Weekly