View Full Version : Straw Bale gardening progress.........
This topic was brought up on another thread and it might get lost in the shuffle, since the thread was about plastic containers.
Float On brought up the idea of planting some veggies in straw bales and Birdie told me about how she is actually doing it. So I thought it might be fun to share our experiences here.
I bought 2 bales of straw today. Its strange, but one is a little bigger and VERY tight, while the other is smaller and much easier to separate the straw. I'm afraid the tight one is going to be a problem to get any soil in-between the pieces of straw. Maybe I should put looser twine around it and then cut the tighter twine??
I put alot of water on it, and tomorrow will look for some organic fertilizer and continue to water it with the fertilizer. I'm going to use my own cured compost to put on top. I'm not sure what I'm going to plant yet........but I did buy some short carrots to try. I might do a variety of lettuces too and some spinach, if it isn't too late in the season. I usually grow beans and cucs up trellises. Maybe I'll try some peppers in straw too.
I'm also thinking of getting 2 more bales and putting them out in my field and growing winter squash out there..........to get the squash bugs away from the garden.
I'm really excited about trying this out. I hope Birdie posts her progress here too. Even if these bales only last one season, they will be great to put all over the garden for next year.
I've been thinking seriously about trying straw-bale gardening this year (since this year I'm actually home enough to tend a garden). I already have the location and the fertilizer; now I just need the straw bales -- which aren't hard to find around here, though the choice is local and expensive or road trip and cheap. I'm voting for road trip and cheap and I'll see how many bales I can stuff into my wagon.
I haven't quite figured out what I want to grow. Enough of my neighbors grow and share tomatoes and cucumbers. I'd rather grow something they might want in trade for those. One choice likely will be collard greens and/or kale. I really like them both, but they tend to be expensive to buy organic and they're on the Dirty Dozen list as conventional crops. I don't know as they'll be hugely popular with neighbors, though. Not sure I will worry much as it takes a lot of greens to cook down to meal-sized portions, so it will take a fair number of plants to fill up the freexzer. Snow peas might make the short list. Garlic would be in high demand, I'm sure; I know nothing about growing it. I suppose if I have 4-6 straw bales sitting on the back lawn, I'll have the motivation to figure out what I'd like to grow. :)
What is the purpose again of this? I've forgotten...
For me, it started out as a search for something to plant in that would be higher off the ground. I guess you have to be careful what kind of plastic you plant in, since some of the bad stuff can leach out of various plastic containers. Float On pointed me in the straw bale direction. Its so biodegradable! You can also use them if you don't want to dig up your lawn (but of course, the grass dies under the bales). But for me, its trying something out that I don't have to lean over to work with, plus I've heard there's very few weeds involved. You can even put trellises behind them and grow things upward from them. They're just sort of really big natural "containers".
For my location I have only an inch or two of soil before I hit shelf rock. I have to do raised beds to garden. Bales would be a good idea on the back side of my property. Haven't decided if I want to give it a go yet or not.
Cathy, that's interesting about the 2 different bales. Wonder if the looser one would work better for root vegetables?
Steve, how about lettuce mix, green beans, radishes, sweet peppers, or yellow squash for trading with the neighbors? Beans might need a trellis if they are pole beans.
Also if anyone is connected to Suzanne's facebook page, she has a good photo how to use strawbales to make a coldframe.
Also if anyone is connected to Suzanne's facebook page, she has a good photo how to use strawbales to make a coldframe.
We did this when I was a kid. Dad salvaged a couple old sliding patio doors somewhere and we just laid them over a rectangle of bales with plants in the middle. Worked like a charm.
Not sure if its the same everywhere, but around here we can get "certified" bales. They are certified to be 98% weed free. Its a trade off. Lots of weeds get cut along with straw when baling. The fields that don't have weeks usually had weed killer and some of that might linger over. My personal choice would be to avoid that and just pull whatever weeds happen to sprout, but I don't mind a little extra maintenance in the garden (I have the time).
I looked at various "organic" fertilizers today and came home empty-handed. They all look a bit funky. I wonder if I can make my own somehow. I've actually read that you can pee on them for fertilizer. :) I got alot of that!
Steve, how about lettuce mix, green beans, radishes, sweet peppers, or yellow squash for trading with the neighbors? Beans might need a trellis if they are pole beans.
Lettuce mix sounds appealing, especially because I eat a ton of salad greens in the summer. Green beans would be good; I like those, as well. Radishes? Maybe; they're the kind of crop that can go almost anywhere and be done early. Unfortunately, bell peppers and I had a parting of the ways when I hit middle age. For some reason they don't like me as much as I like them. rrrrr Yellow squash or zucchini might work. We have the kind of neighborhood in which you could put anything outside with a "FREE" sign and it would be gone in 24 hours, so no worries about having to sneak zucchini onto neighbor's porches at night.
I suppose I'd better get going on it, though!
This is interesting. My brother works for Cummins. I mentioned to him I was going to try the straw bale thing and he said "cummins does that". I googled it and found this article about it.
http://www.cummins.com/cmi/navigationAction.do?nodeId=189&siteId=1&nodeName=Garden+Keeps+on+Giving&menuId=1050
Gardenarian
5-8-13, 7:41pm
I have tried this and found that the soil falls through the bales, so I had to keep adding more. I was thinking of planting in burlap or something to hold the soil in. I also found that the soil dried really quickly (more so than in a regular raised bed.)
I now have heaps of composted straw, which is a wonderful mulch and amendment.
Oh, and make sure you get straw, not hay. I had some sprouting just the same, but not too much.
Garlic goes in in the fall, Steve, from what I've read.
Will be interesting to track your progress, all!
Our bales were planted on Saturday with some pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and some sunflower transplants. The sunflower seeds sprouted this morning, no sign of the pumpkin yet. The bale was covered with mushrooms last week which is a sign of decomposition within the bale. A good sign.
We set the irrigation on the same valve as our half barrels so they will water 5 minutes a day. The weather will be back in the 90s by Friday so we expect the rest of the seeds to sprout soon.
Here is the website for the author of the book we are following. http://strawbalegardens.com/
One reason for planting in a straw bale is if you have very poor soil, hard pan, contaminated soil or if you just don't want to build raised beds which are much more expensive than straw bales. We're just trying it because we have a very active gardening community and the author was on our local gardening radio show. So, we get the public asking about the things on that show and we had an empty spot where we are going to put a small circular planter.
Cathy, the alternate recipe calls for non organic lawn fertilizer (ammonium sulfate) and that takes 14 days to condition a bale. It is very cheap, but chemical and obviously not organic.
Garlic goes in in the fall, Steve, from what I've read.
Bummer. That would rule out growing on a bale. That also accounts for why the guy at the Farmer's Market has seed garlic only toward the end of the growing season.
I looked at various "organic" fertilizers today and came home empty-handed. They all look a bit funky. I wonder if I can make my own somehow. I've actually read that you can pee on them for fertilizer. :) I got alot of that!
That works, just make sure to dilute it quite a bit before applying. You probably want to avoid direct application anyway, a straw bale lacks something in the comfort sense.
That works, just make sure to dilute it quite a bit before applying. You probably want to avoid direct application anyway, a straw bale lacks something in the comfort sense.
Also, if you're peeing on your garden, monitor your meds. Antibiotics are bad for gardens!
I wonder how SSRIs and beta blockers are? haha
haha Gregg! Don't worry.......I won't be direct-depositing. haha
Actually, I did more reading and one site said chicken poop was good for fertilizer. So I gathered up some in the coop and mixed it with some water and put it on, then watered the bales well. I asked the girls if they could please give me some fresher stuff, but they said they weren't in the mood.
Birdie........I have 2 bales from last Fall that I was going to shred up and put on the garden for over winter, and I never got to it. They have mushrooms growing out of them, and I thought that might not be a good thing to use. Maybe I was wrong? It would be great if that was safe to use, since I could plant it immediately. I guess there's mushrooms in the soil and we don't worry about planting in that.
What do you all think?
I wonder if all these various types of fertilizers will attract the raccoons??
Birdie.......did you set your bales on newspaper or anything? I'm not too worried about stuff growing up through it from the ground.
Using fresh manure, there is always the chance of getting having E-coli or salmonella in the manure. Just something to consider when growing edibles. The stuff you buy in bags is fully composted, and fully composted means heating all surfaces to 130 - 140 degrees for something like 3 days. I personally would not eat food grown in fresh manure, but that is a personal choice.
Since mushrooms growing out of our straw bale was an indication of decomposition, I would assume that growing in your bale is still safe for the same reason. However, I wouldn't eat the mushrooms since there are a number that cause liver failure. Every year in the county where I live we have some deaths from eating wild picked mushrooms. Apparently some that grow here look like 'good' eating mushrooms from other countries. Usually it is people who have moved here from other countries that pick and eat the mushrooms, and die from liver failure. Terrible.
Sorry, the more I learn about gardening and food safety the more I prefer to eat what I grow. Occupational hazard, I guess.
Because you already have mushrooms, you might not need for full 18 days of fertilization and watering. Your bales might be ready to plant earlier. If you have a compost thermometer or a quick read oven thermometer you could check the internal temp after 10 days or so.
Anyway, back to straw bales. We only raked back the wood chip mulch that we have around the outskirts of our vegetable garden and put the bales on the ground.
I don't know about raccoons. I have a creek behind my house and have had raccoons in my yard. But my vegetable garden is fenced to keep my dogs out, so that might help with the raccoons....at our demo garden we have not had any problems with critters yet.
Our straw bale garden is doing quite well so far; we have 2 pumpkin plants and 6 or 8 container sized sunflowers growing. We just supplemental fed the plants with fish emulsion and will continue to do so monthly. The bale is leaning to one side, so we will need to stake it up soon.
Does anyone else have anything planted in a straw bale and if so how is it doing?
Glad to hear yours is coming along Birdie. Mine is sort of at a stand-still. Since I couldn't get it cured in time, I went ahead and planted everything in the ground in the garden. I have alot of grass growing out the top of my bales. I watered them for about 2 weeks and used compost, coffee grounds and chicken manure on the top. I think what I'll do now is pull all the grass and put a couple inches of composted soil on top of it and plant some short carrots (seed) that I bought. We'll see how that goes.
I know to start this process alot earlier next year. Do you plan on using your same bales next year?
When I put my 2 bales in the garden, they are supported on one side with the fence, and with a few bamboo stakes on the other. No leaning just yet.
Thanks for the update and I look forward to hearing about your progress.
We don't plan on using the bales again, except for mulching the vegetable beds. We expect the bales will be too decomposed to reuse except for mulch and we have 9 raised beds that we normally mulch with straw. So they will be used.
We are going to install a 3 foot round planter using small pavers in the same spot this fall. We had intended on doing that this spring until we heard the subject on the local radio garden show. We always get lots of questions on any topics on that radio show, so this was an easy way to be able to answer them. In a demonstration garden it is much easier to have permanent planting beds.
We have 8 beds that are 4' x 20' and 18 inches high, 1 ADA bed that is 3' x 8 and 24 inches high and a 6 foot horse trough. The trough is lined with bamboo barrier to prevent the roots of any vegetables from coming in contact with the metal due to zinc leaching. We also have 6 half oak barrels. We plant beneficial attractants, herbs and container sized plants (tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, zucchini, etc) in the barrels. The trough is currently planted with flowers as a memorial garden due to the death of one of our Master gardeners. We are considering planting it with strawberries as a permanent bed or getting a full barrel and using that as a strawberry planter.
We have lots to do and the bale has been more work than we want to do again. But, it is a good conversation starter :-)
The other day I planted a red pepper, 8 spinach and a rosemary plant in the bales. We'll see how it goes. Something was digging in it, so I put a piece of curved fencing over it. I'll keep you posted on how things do.
You're right......it is a bit of work. But I really like not having to lean over so far to garden. The rest of my regular garden is doing pretty well. My dream is to have something like 3 to 4' high raised beds, filled with organic soil...........but I doubt that will ever happen. But at least I've converted alot of my garden into trellises, and its great harvesting that stuff.
Dw and I just read a book called,Stand Up Gardening. The author uses straw to fill raised beds. Tried this on one bed already,seems to work well.Raised beds can hold a lot of soil.The straw really simplified the process.Working on construction of another raised bed now. Soil not good here by my house,only a couple of inches of topsoil.
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