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.
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Greening the Garden was a very interesting book because it discussed the non main stream vegetables such as quinoa, amaranth, sunchokes, comfrey, dried beans, soybeans, fava beans, and others. It was a nice introduction to what I consider the lesser used, if not lesser known, vegetables.

This isn't another uninformative how to grow a tomato book. It does discuss growing certain vegetables as I stated above, but what I really enjoyed, and was surprised to find in the book, were the writings concerning our environment, our current food productions inpact on earth and the inpact on people's health who consume these foods (both meat and vegetable).

This book was a wonderful read on environmental problems such as considering how much food we get from one cow per acre compared to if we grew vegetables on that one acre. Per pound the vegetables would far out beat the cow and would supply food for that many more people. There are discussions on chemical use and how Indonesia is one of the first to ban chemical use and has reclaimed its rice crops by doing so. The author gives us hope that our seed diversity which has been declining over the years may not be gone forever. Apparently the author found some genetic diversity in some bean seeds he's been saving. This, as he says, is just a reminder that genes from the past may still be present in todays seeds. One more reason to save and protect our open pollinated seeds.

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• All aspects of salad gardening from site preparation to harvesting.
• Special techniques for growing over 200 familiar and exotic salad plants.
• Emphasis on organic methods to achieve high yields in limited space.