Organic Farming in a Nutshell: Eliot Coleman's Self-Fed Farm and Garden

I've been waiting for a book like this for a long time!

For years I’ve been wishing that there was one book that summed up all the fundamentals of organic farming. A book that was clear, concise, and supported by decades of practical experience. A book that I could hand to someone and say, “If you want to understand what organic farming is all about, read this.”

I have finally found that book! It’s Eliot Coleman’s The Self-Fed Farm and Garden: A Return to the Roots of the Organic Method (Chelsea Green, 2025).

Eliot Coleman is extremely qualified to write this book. He’s been farming organically since the 1960s. His other books, especially the New Organic Grower, are the primary texts of modern organic vegetable production in the northern United States. Most importantly, Eliot has the most extensive library of historic organic farming books that I’ve ever seen outside of a land-grant university. He sprinkles quotes from over a century of organic history throughout this book.

So what’s organic farming all about? It’s not about input substitution. It’s not just a marketing term. No, it’s “a system of agriculture that acknowledges the preeminence of soil life as the power behind plant growth and quality food production.”

Healthy soil, full of dynamically cycling organic matter and teeming with microorganisms, is the foundation of organic farming. It’s all about building the best, healthiest soil possible. Eliot’s own experience highlights the amazing power of organic farming to regenerate soil. Over the past sixty years, he’s turned acidic, stony soils into fertile fields that grow bumper crops of lush vegetables.

When Eliot first started building the soil at Four Season Farm, he brought in outside fertility—oyster shells, composted manure, seaweed from a nearby cove. But he doesn’t do that anymore. Now he grows all his own fertility with cover crops and green manures, which add fresh organic matter to the soil every year and draw up minerals from the subsoil with their deep roots.

Since the best way to get this homegrown fertility into the soil is with a rototiller, Eliot explains why strict no-till isn’t necessary for organic production. He explains that incorporating green manures builds soil organic matter faster than herbicide-dependent no-till. Eliot points out that Edward Faulkner, the author of Plowman’s Folly, wasn’t a no-till advocate. He actually recommended shallow, non-inversion tillage—like rototilling.

Another fundamental of organic farming is that healthy plants grown on healthy soil are resistant to pests and diseases. Healthy food grown on healthy soil is also nutritionally superior. That’s why Eliot is so opposed to hydroponics being allowed in organic production. “I have no argument with hydroponic or aquaponic systems,” he clarifies. “But I am opposed to that produce being labeled organic.”

It’s time to reclaim the word “organic,” to bring it back “to its purer, less industrial roots,” to put the emphasis on building living soil, not merely substituting inputs. This timely and readable little book by one of America’s most influential organic farmers is an important step toward that goal.