The Four Season Farm Gardener's Cookbook

The title of this award-winning book, "The Four Season Farm Gardener's Cookbook," may be misleading. It is not just a cookbook. Part 1 is an excellent, thorough, and detailed guide to growing organic vegetables. Part 2 is a cookbook with recipes using the fruits and vegetables grown in Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman's gardens.Besides the detailed, orderly, and step-by-step presentation of the material in the book along with the numerous colored photographs, it may also have won the American Horticultural Society's Book Award in 2014 because of the style in which the book was written. It is so interesting; it draws you in.If you want to learn to grow organically, or maybe you have not been successful at it, this extensive presentation based on their years of experience is a must read for you. Once you are growing food you will enjoy using these recipes with their replacement suggestions for other plants that will be growing during other seasons of the year - along with her various interesting tips.I have read the entire book and waited until I finished to post my review.

This book is focused on the how and why of a kitchen garden, the ground prepartion, growing and storage of produce. It includes the best choices in plant varieties and why, and many neat recipes. It's just an EXCELLENT book for someone wanting to understand how to grow food for their family - especially in the face of hard times.There is even a section on what to plant for a true yearly cycle SURVIVAL GARDEN, if times get that rough for you and yours.The content is wonderful for someone just getting into this seriously, and for those needing to consider the many angles for success in doing this, in order to make the best decisions.Don't let clever bad reviews mislead you. If you need a through introduction and how to manual, this is one of the best.

Beautifully written book, comprehensive and complete for all types of gardening. Wonderfully inspiring to keep the home gardener growing year after year. Covers many types of things to grow and gives the reader wonderful layouts for how to plan and plant the garden year after year. This book should be on the book list of every home gardener and on the book shelf of every school garden. Also contains wonderful recipes, new and unusual combinations not seen before. Beautifully written, illustrated and inspiring.

Enjoying this book very much. Like the ideas for a multi-season garden with recipes to enjoy the harvest.

This is a fantastic book! Yes, I have other books that Barbara and Eliot have written, but in my opinion this one is their best yet! It takes all the knowledge that the two of them have aquired over the many years that the two of them have been gardening and puts it ALL into an enjoyable and easy to read form. Like some have said, it's two books in one! It starts out with everything a beginning or even seasoned gardener needs to know on building the soil, feeding the plants, suggestions on what seeds to plant, when to plant, etc.... They tell you how to garden year round, no matter where you might live, in any climate. How to build your own simple greenhouse and other season extenders and the list goes on and on! And then Barbara even shares lots of receipes that she has developed, to eat fresh from your garden, year round! What more could anyone ask for!? If you can only buy one vegetable gardening book, this should be the one you get!

I've enjoyed the writings of this couple for many years and this book is another of their excellent collaborations.

I wanted to like this book. I own every book Eliot Coleman has published, and I've been expanding a garden which will eventually grow most of my own vegetables in an average sized suburban yard based on his techniques. I highly recommend them. But reading through his books I frequently come across vegetable I've never heard about (tatsoi, anyone?) and my hope was that this book would be a systematic, season-based guide to cooking from the gardening plans laid out in Coleman's books, with ideas to use the less common vegetables.It isn't, unfortunately. It is a decent collection of a few recipes using fresh ingredients from a garden, but it isn't particularly innovative as a cookbook. And about 60% of the book is gardening instruction, mostly a rehash of the techniques laid out in Coleman's books, though this time with color line drawings instead of black and white. I didn't need that.If you haven't read any of Eliot Coleman's work (start with Four-Season Harvest if you are interested) and are interested in growing vegetables year round, and you don't have any of Alice Waters' season based cookbooks (start with The Art of Simple Food, it's amazing), this is probably a decent purchase. If, like me, you already have a few cookbooks focused on seasonal cooking, and you already own some books on year-round gardening, then you don't need this.

This is the proverbial all-in-one-book.Everything you will ever need to know about planting, harvesting, and cooking the bounty of the garden. It is excellently written, clear but honest while being entertaining, and the color photos throughout are dazzling. The recipes tend to be a little more meat-oriented than I had expected, but most are elegant and creative. The book can be confusing when recommending what species of vegetables to plant, as there are so many factors to consider. Want a beet that winters over well? That's good to eat right out of the ground, or that looks painterly on the plate? I scratch my head, but better too much information than not enough.The chief plus of this book is the way it inspires. Just leafing through it makes you want to run out and weed.

Exellent livre!Superbes recettesComme neuf!

Got this ages ago - all good!

As a new gardener I love this book. Lots of great detail! I love the cookbook aspect as well. I was looking for a farm to table kind of book and this delivers. They explain things very well. I know I will use this book as a great resource for many years to come.

The voices of experience, simple as that. When an author really knows his/her subject from years of doing it, the experience surfaces in his or her writing. And that's what you get from this book. I like the fact that the book isn't 100 % about growing. I like the recipe section because it shows a way to enjoy your harvest.

I loved the way the book was laid out. As a beginner to gardening, I found a lot of useful tips. And the recipes looks so good, can't wait to harvest my produce and try out a few of the recipes.