Book Description
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.
Customer Reviews:
Does this book even need another 5-star review?.......2007-10-06
Even if you don't want to garden year round (if you do this is the only book you need), it's a fascinating and fact-filled read. He tells how to garden more efficiently, how to compost and rejuvenate soil with crop rotation and "green manure" and which direction to plant rows for optimal time in the sun. There are formulas throughout such as how high a retaining wall to build to protect plants from cold (the wall heats up during the day and radiates warmth back during the night), or how many degrees to slant a bed to maximize sun and minimize cold wind damage. He tells how to plan succession planting to have vegetables year round, rather than one humungous crop all at once. His tone is congenial, never talking down or above his target audience. It's fascinating--if you buy you won't be sorry!
ORGANIC HOME GARDENER.......2007-08-04
This book is loaded with dynamite information. I have enjoyed reading it and will certainly make use of the info therein in the future!
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long.......2007-07-15
Eliot Coleman has combined how-to text with drawings that inform and inspire. Highly recommended reading!
Helpful info.......2007-06-28
I am very excited about becoming self-sufficient in feeding my family of six. This book has extremely helpful ideas that are very cost effective. Highly recommend this book.
The bible of 4-season gardening.......2007-04-18
There is nothing like the satisfaction of talking to another seasoned gardener and having them say "isn't it too early for snap-peas?" and responding "nope, mine are doing great". This book gave me the confidence and knowledge to plant a month and a half earlier than I have ever planted before, without protection for the plants even!
It lays out in simple terms variety selection, location, timing and all the information you need to be harvesting vegetables literally all year round all the way down to zone 3!!
Book Description
Co-authored by Jacqueline Heriteau, Andre Viette and Mark Viette, all leading gardening experts in the Mid-Atlantic Region (Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington D.C.), this proven monthly format has helped gardeners experience more success and enjoyment from their gardens.
Includes the major gardening categories, from annuals and perennials to trees and shrubs, including lawns and vegetables.
The trend in gardening books is toward regional titles, and book retailers are well aware of this.
The Month-by-Month series provides credible information on maintaining plants throughout the year in a specific region. These books contain monthly advice on what to do in the garden and when to do it, and contain several plant categories ranging from annuals to vines.
Gardening is now the favorite leisure pastime in America. Homeowners are realizing the health benefits derived from gardening, and the resulting increase in their home's property value.
Customer Reviews:
Needs to be organized by month, not by plant type.......2007-08-24
I really like the information in this book. However instead of being organized by Month as the title suggests, It is organized by Plant type (perennial, annual,etc.) I find it time consuming and frustrating to have to continually flip from one section to another just to find out what to do for a specific month.
very helpful!.......2006-05-07
This book is the perfect tool for me, as I'm always wondering what I should be doing when to get the best results. It's unique in the way it's written and I don't believe it's meant to be your only resource for gardening information. It's very good at what it does and I actually like the way it's broken down, it works well for me.
Needs to be reorganized.......2006-04-11
I like the idea behind this book a lot. It has a lot of good tips, but it needs to be reorganized. There are January - December sections for annuals, perennials, bulbs, etc. I don't like having to have to go to several different sections for each month. It would be a nicer book if it was better organized.
Very helpful to Mid-Atlantic "newbie".......2005-09-25
I just moved to Maryland from a quite different climate and was unsure how to deal with the changing seasons in this part of the country. It's very helpful to be able to look under a particular month and plant type and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing this time of year. Should I still be pruning my flowers? Is it okay to plant ANYTHING this time of year? What about preparing my garden for the winter? How do I deal with humid summers? My new home has a long-untended yard and garden, so I will pretty much be starting from scratch, and it's great to have some idea what can be planted, when it can be planted, and how to care for it.
Poorly-indexed and frustrating to use.......2005-04-29
At first glance, the book seems to be nicely organized, with month-by-month information for various types of plants/tasks. However, finding information about a particular plant can be frustrating, as the index is inadequate, and not detailed enough. For example, the index for azaleas contains a list of 27 different page numbers, which are not sub-indexed. This group of 27 pages actually covers a large section of azaleas as houseplants, and azaleas as shrubs. It would have been easier to find the information I was looking for if the index had listed "azaleas: houseplants" and then "azaleas: shrubs". Other plants suffer similar indexing fates.
Another gripe is the lack of any easily found index information for pests or for weeds. I recently moved from the West coast, and have found that most of the pests and weeds are completely different. In fact, I have no idea what a "chinch bug" looks like, and this book leaves me in complete ignorance. The book mentions a chinch bug several times, but nowhere is there a picture, nor can I find chinch bug in the index.
Likewise, I cannot find a picture of, for example, nutgrass. Nutgrass is mentioned a few times, but alas, this book fails to help me learn how to identify it.
Overall, I am truly sorry that I spent money on this book.
Book Description
Written by Judy Lowe, a leading gardening expert in the states of Tennessee and Kentucky, the proven monthly format has helped gardeners experience more success and enjoyment from their gardens.
Includes the major gardening categories, from annuals and perennials to trees and shrubs, including lawns and vegetables.
The trend in gardening books is toward regional titles, and book retailers are well aware of this. The
Month-by-Month series provides credible information on maintaining plants throughout the year in a specific region. These books contain monthly advice on what to do in the garden and when to do it, and contain several plant categories ranging from annuals to vines.
Gardening is now the favorite leisure pastime in America. Homeowners are realizing the health benefits derived from gardening, and the resulting increase in their home's property value.
Customer Reviews:
Useful information, useless organization!.......2006-03-18
Honestly, I'd love to give this book more than 2 stars, because it so clearly covers material needed by gardeners in our area (especially beginning to intermediate gardeners like me). Having lived on the West Coast, where the Sunset Western Garden Book is the definitive gardener's bible, I looked high and low for an analog here in the South.
This is not it.
Don't get me wrong: this book has some good information and what's there is written in a highly readable, friendly voice.
But it is not a reference book, and it will not answer every gardening question you may have. And it may even leave you with some new questions after you try to make sense of some of the overly simple descriptions. And maybe that's OK, because it's not billed as that kind of a reference guide.
What is IS billed as, though, is a month-by-month guide to working in the garden. And it's here that it actually fails the most.
Organized into sections by different types of plants (bulbs, shrubs, trees, etc), this book is then further organized within each of those sections by month... ALPHABETICALLY! If that's not the craziest thing you've ever heard, just try to imagine actually using this book to try to understand what you need to do this weekend. You would need to flip through each section for each type of plant in your garden, and then flip around the counterintuitive listing (since when does April come before February, which comes before January?) to find the appropriate month. Lather, rinse, and repeat for each type of plant in your garden.
Why the author and publisher of this book didn't realize it would have made immeasurably more sense to group all the information together for each month and sort those months in CALENDAR order, I have no idea. But I'm here to tell you, it ain't worth it. Stick with the
Southern Living Garden Book and you'll be a lot less frustrated.
Very helpful.......2006-02-18
Excellent advice for all times of the year, even in the winter months, when you might be wondering how to make yourself useful. There are chapters in all the areas involved: trees, shrubs, lawns, bulbs, etc. And of course it is specific to our area.
Month by Month Winner Book.......2005-09-25
This book lives up to its title. I have been gardening for years and learned quite a few new tricks. The book has editions for all parts of the country so buy the right book.
TennesseeGardener.....
Very helpful guide.......2004-05-05
I am enjoying using this book. Since I previously lived in another state with a different climate, I'm not always sure of the right time to do things in the yard -- plant tomoatoes, prune roses, pinch back perennials. This book puts that information at my fingertips. I also like the extensive general information about each type of plant -- from shrubs,trees and vegetables to bulbs and houseplants -- and what really matters with their care. I've learned a lot reading this guide and like the same author's Tennessee Gardener's Guide, too.
month my month gardening.......2004-04-14
Book seems confusing and busy because it is broken down into too many sections. The book has 11 plant categories broken down into 12 monthly sections which total 132 sections. I would prefer to just identify the month and find all the plant categories covered in that month's section. The book requires too much flipping back and forth. It would also be great to have a section on disease detection and control for each month of the year.
Book Description
Includes the major gardening categories, from annuals and perennials to trees and shrubs, including lawns and vegetables.
The
Month-by-Month series provides credible information on maintaining plants throughout the year in a specific state. These books contain monthly advice on what to do in the garden and when to do it, along with the author's personal recommendations on specific plants that perform well in the state.
Gardening is now the favorite leisure pastime in America. More homeowners are enjoying the beauty and satisfaction they derive from improving their home landscape.
Customer Reviews:
Cheater's guide! Help yourself and your plants........2005-09-03
I guess I didn't expect to really like this book, and I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps I have bad associations with month-by-month instructionals. At anyrate, I was completely won over. This book is handy, handy, handy. If you live in NY or a similar climate with the extreme winter and tropical summer, this is a helpful reminder. I garden professionally and still rely on it as a task list just to remind myself when my brain's on overload. Plant categories are covered separately month-by-month which was a little confusing at first glance--why not have all plants listed in monthly sections, but no matter. The categories are: Annuals and Biennials; Bulbs, Corms, Rhizomes, and Tubers; Herbs and Vegetables; Houseplants; Lawns; Perennials; Roses; Shrubs; Trees; Vines, Ground Covers, and Ornamental Grasses; and Water and Bog Plants. Pretty comprehensive. Buy it and make your gardening a little easier!
Helpful reference book I'll use time and time again.......2005-08-08
Clear, concise format -- a little redundant in spots (did we really need to be reminded in every section that January is the month to get our 'wish list' together?) but I expect this expenditure to pay for itself several times over. Thanks!
Book Description
Month-by-Month™ guides offer valuable advice on the proper timing of gardening maintenance for each month. Month-by-Month™ Gardening in the Carolinas is one of the first titles of the redesigned series from Cool Springs Press.
Top features include:
- 4-color photography and illustrations to demonstrate cultural practices
- Covers all major plant categories
- Specific advice for every month of the year
- Updated edition includes text revisions, additional reference materials, and a new design
Customer Reviews:
Very helpful.......2007-02-11
This book is very helpful. It contains easy to read info and presented in a manner that even the beginner garder can use as a refrence.
Great for 'transplanted' residents.......2007-01-11
This book is valuable for people new to this geographic area. It gives specific gardening tasks for each month. Being new to the area, I found this to be an indispensible resource.
Book Description
The Month-by-Month™ series offer valuable advice on the proper timing of garden maintainance activities for each month. Month-By-Month™ Gardening in Texas is one of the first titles of the redesigned series from Cool Springs Press.
Top features include:
- 4-color photography and line-drawing illustrations to demonstrate cultural practices
- Covers all major plant categories
- Specific advice for every month of the year
- Updated edition includes text revisions, additional reference materials, and a new design.
Customer Reviews:
Great for beginners!.......2007-09-19
Great book for beginners like me. Looking forward to starting my Texas garden! I only wish there were more illustrations.
Book Description
Month-by-Month™ guides offer valuable advice on the proper timing of garden maintenance activities for each month. Month-by-Month™ Gardening in Ohio is one of the first titles of the redesigned series from Cool Springs Press.
Top features include:
- 4-color photography and illustrations to demonstrate cultural practices
- Covers all major plant categories
- Specific advice for every month of the year
- Updated edition includes text revisions, additional reference materials, and a new design
Customer Reviews:
A What and When of Gardening in Ohio.......2007-09-02
A very thorough and well organized guide. It not only tells you what to do but helps you frame the questions you should be asking. Highly recommended.
GREAT GARDENING BOOK.......2007-01-14
I bought my first house in October 05 and I wanted beautiful spring and summer flowers. The property had roses and several other perennials. I needed a book that would help this beginner know what to do with what was already there as well as help me add new plants and flowers. I reviewed 25 gardening books from my library network last spring. This was by far my favorite. It gives you all the things you should know for lots of different flowers and plants and lets you know things you should be doing each month...like plant, prune, fertilize, etc. There are two versions of this book the original and this revised version. The revised costs a little more but there are color pictures in this edition as well as a much better layout in general. To me the newer edition was worth every extra penny and is the only one that I actually purchased out of all the books I reviewed. A must have for any Ohio gardener.
Book Description
- Takes the fear and guesswork out of gardening
- Provides an achievable plan for gardening success for beginners and experienced alike
Customer Reviews:
Very helpful.......2007-05-19
Lots of information, easy access, about gardening and composting in Georgia. There are a few pictures which help make it a well rounded reference and how to book.
Book Description
Written by John Cretti, a leading gardening expert in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain area, this proven monthly format will help gardeners experience more success and enjoyment from their gardens.
Includes the major gardening categories, from annuals and perennials to trees and shrubs, including lawns and vegetables.
The trend in gardening books is toward regional titles, and book retailers are well aware of this. The
Month-by-Month series provides credible information on maintaining plants throughout the year in a specific region. These books contain monthly advice on what to do in the garden and when to do it, and contain several plant categories ranging from annuals to vines.
Gardening is now the favorite leisure pastime in America. Homeowners are realizing the health benefits derived from gardening, and the resulting increase in their home's property value.
Customer Reviews:
Great color photos, detailed explanations of plants. Great buy!.......2007-03-18
When I received this book, I read it cover to cover! The book highlights various perrenials, trees, shrubs, and even annuals with a color photo and complete description of the area of the garden in which the plant will perform best. The author details the problems with each plant, including pests, mold, deer resistance, etc. This book touches on xeriscaping (most of the plants that perform well in the Rocky Mountains are drought-friendly). The book also has a fair amount of detail on lawns, taking care of gardening problems, etc., but the reason to buy the book is for the wonderful explanations on plants to put in your Rocky Mountain garden.
Very specialized info.......2007-01-21
The growing climate is harsh in the Rockies, so I appreciated the detailed advice for all kinds of plants and trees. Very practical and for year-round use.
Book Description
Written by Mike Miller, a leading gardening expert in St. Louis, this proven monthly format will help Missouri gardeners experience more success and enjoyment from their gardens.
Includes the major gardening categories, from annuals and perennials to trees and shrubs, including lawns and vegetables.
The
Month-by-Month series provides credible information on maintaining plants throughout the year in a specific state. These books contain monthly advice on what to do in the garden and when to do it, along with the author's personal recommendations on specific plants that perform well in the state.
Gardening is now the favorite leisure pastime in America. More homeowners are enjoying the beauty and satisfaction they derive from improving their home landscape.
Customer Reviews:
No illustrations.......2006-08-29
While this may be an excellent resource for around-the-year gardening, I was disappointed that there were absolutely no photographs of the recommended plants or examples of blooming beds that could be created. I purchased this book and intended it for a friend who is moving to Missouri and thought illustrations of the flora that thrive there would have been an asset, especially if she is unfamiliar with something Mr. Miller recommends. End the end, I returned the book and purchased his other book, Missouri Gardener's Guide that does have a photo reference. While the book description did not say there were illustrations, I assumed (incorrectly) that a book boasting blooms all year would have plenty of pictures to prove it!
Books:
- Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
- French Country Living
- Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
- Great Houses of the Hudson River
- Green Roof Plants: A Resource and Planting Guide
- Growing Bonsai: A Practical Encyclopedia: The essential practical guide to a classic art with techniques, step-by-step projects and over 600 photographs
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- Hortica: Color Cyclopedia of Garden Flora and Indoor Plants
- How to Build Walks, Walls & Patio Floors
Books Index
Books Home
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General
| Gardening & Horticulture
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (A Gardener's Supply Book)
Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits & Vegetables
The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals
How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits: (And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops)
Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners
