With fall approaching, the new issue of Zone 4 embraces the turning of seasons with expert advice on landscaping, harvesting vegetables and extending your growing season.

Montana is well represented with features on seed saving, local foods and an award-winning vineyard. Fisher Seeds, Belgrade, is widely known for offering heirloom varieties of vegetables, all grown, hand seeded, packaged by third-generation seed saver Judy Fisher.

Bozeman resident Cherilyn DeVries, a self-acknowledged local food geek, compares the cost of three meals – hamburger and fries, pizza and whole chicken – purchased from a fast food chain, supermarket and local farmer. The results may surprise you. At Ten Spoon Vineyards, west of Missoula, long summer days help overcome a short growing season for grapes. Owners Connie Poten and Andy Sponseller have put Montana on the oenophile’s map with awards at the Norwest Wine Summit Competition, the Fingerlakes International Wine Competition and the National Women’s Wine Competition.

Of course, readers in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and northeastern Utah will find stories by and about their neighbors too.

Is the yellow of aspen leaves the only autumn color in your yard’s palette? In “Seeing Red,” Idaho landscaper Dayle Searles offers a helpful list of trees and shrubs that will give you the rich reds of maples back east, and which generally do well here in the Rocky Mountain West.

The National Garden Association reports the number of households planting vegetable gardens is growing by 10 percent each year. If you’ve grown more tomatoes, cucumbers and beans than you can eat fresh, “Canning 101” tells you all you need to know to preserve them for eating all winter. And in “What Happens After Harvest?” Dr. Bob Gough and Cheryl Moore-Gough explain the major physiological processes that cause vegetables to ripen and spoil, offering precise information on when to harvest and how to store for maximum goodness.

Well-known organic gardener and author Eliot Coleman returns to describe his clever scheme of crop rotations using inexpensive “quick hoops” to grow produce all year long.

Flowers are not forgotten, as we tour the 18-acre Gardens on Spring Creek in Ft. Collins, Colo., a city that wrote a big check for a world-class botanic garden for all its citizens to enjoy. And flowers are the stars of the Container Gardening Contest as we present the award-winning entries.

Our cover boy this issue is rock n’ roll legend Joe Cocker. Famous for his covers of songs like “With A Little Help From My Friends” and “You Are So Beautiful,” the 66-year-old Woodstock alumnus still tours big time. When he’s home, outside Crawford, Colo., he finds peace and pleasure growing tomatoes in his greenhouse.

Zone 4 is the only magazine devoted to high altitude gardening, landscapes, and local foods for the Rocky Mountain states, offering expert advice on flowers, veggies, shrubs and trees from the area’s best horticulturists.

For more information or to subscribe, please visit www.zone4magazine.com or call 406-586-8540.