Strawbale Gardening - no weeding, no hoeing, no tilling

All my plants are in except the watermelon. :hurray: I decided on doing watermelon later than the others, so my bales aren't ready yet, but I'll get those in later next week. Between planting all those plants and picking strawberries this afternoon my back is a tad sore now. At least the hardest part is over!

 

Ok Ready, can you give me the quick and fast version of how to do this, i really do not have time to read the whole thread. I was just thinking it would be better, especially because of the dogs, having the plants up off the ground. What kind of straw, where did you find it, and any other helpful hints and oh yeah, have i waited too long to start it this year?

 

Super simple Kaci. Read this http://www.carolinacountry.com/cgardens/thismonth/march07guide/StrawBales3.07.pdf by Kent. It is only two pages long and explains everything, except he has made some minor adjustments along the way...

Just get wheat or oat strawbales (I got mine from Stephen's in Fuquay, but Agri Supply carries them too) and plot out your garden. Then follow Kent's instructions and you'll be good to go. I would not think it is too late to start a garden now but hopefully Kent will get on here soon and give you more info. Best wishes!!

 

Thanks so much, DH keeps saying he is going to dig me a garden, but finding time is a hard thing to do, so not only will this benefit the dogs not chasing their balls into my garden, i can get it done so much quicker:hurray:

 

ready2cmyKing: you did an excellent summary!

 

New To This Type of Gardening

I have 2 full grown black walnut trees in my next door (south) neighbors' yard & 1 in the neighbor's yard to the north. I've tried everything to get my tomatoes, cukes, & zucchini to grow but the only success I had was potting them up (very expensive).

I heard about strawbale gardening from a friend who tried it last year with mixed results but I don't know how she went about it. Anyway, the idea so appeals to me, I'm going to give this a go.

I'm up in Michigan near Detroit, so it's not warm enough to set tomatoes out yet- probably another 2 weeks. I've started a bale from Halloween two days ago & am getting 3 more tomorrow. I couldn't find the ammonium nitrate (got a few weird looks when I asked about it, too), so I'm using blood meal. I've set down plastic sheeting to isolated the bales from the ground to prevent walnut toxicity from leeching into the bales & the garden is outside the drip-line. I'll have to get creative to keep the squirrels from burying the nuts into the bales, but that's August.

I do have a question about 'cooking' the bale: how do you measure the internal temp & how high does it need to get to kill off the bad bacteria?

Thanks much!

 

I used the thermometer that came with my turkey cooker, or you can just stick your hand down inside the bale to check on the temp. If it feels warm to your hand then things are going well.

Not every set of bales do the same thing.

This year my bales had already gotten wet a few times under an old tarp and they didn't really heat up like last year, but that's OK.

Even if you don't check on the temps, the bales will be ready in about 2 weeks as long as you've kept them moistened.

As for the "bacteria", I'm not up on that subject. I don't know of any bacteria in the bales to be concerned about.

 

I'm lost! If the bales are tightly strung, how do you plant the plants in the bale?

 

After about 2 weeks of being wet the bales loosen up some. An easy way is to take a trowel and use it to help "crack open" the bales at the spot you want to drop in a plant. Pull the trowel toward you and use the heel of your other hand and thumb to push in the opposite direction. Once you try it a few times you'll get the hang of it.

 

I mis-spoke; my bad. I just wondered what's the high temperature range they should get to.

 

Inside bale temps can reach 120-125.

That was the max I've ever seen my bales reach.

 

Kent, our displays at our stores are working like crazy! We even sent out an email with the info in it and folks have been hitting our website and spending $. Yippee :hurray:

 

Sending MONEY!!!!????

Let me know if you need my mailing address or bank acct #!!!!!

Kent

 

WOW

Now this is totaly cool. I have seen this before but never realized what they were actualy doing there. I just thought it was for the animals.
I realy like this Idea and Most certainlt will give it a try. Thanks for the info.

 

Michigan reporting: my bales aren't going up above 85 or so, but it's not even into the 70's this week. I began treating with blood meal yesterday & the one leftover from Halloween sprouted a mushroom last night. I can't plant tomoatoes yet, but is this one ready to go?

 

Mushrooms are usually a good sign that the bale is ready. Don't get in a big hurry if your temps are still low, especially at night. Plants will tend to just sit in the bales and not do much.

 

What I've learned so far . .


As this is my first season for bale gardening (with Kent and the gang as my Gurus), I decided to do it as a research project as well as a garden. I heard reports from some folks who had used straw and some who had used hay and so decided to go 1/2 and 1/2.
I was unwilling to deal with ammonium nitrate (for environmental reasons) and so went with Urea. The bales are in great shape and at this point, I think next year I'll probably go completely with hay for a couple of reasons: #1, in my area, mulch grade hay is half the price of straw (I know- weird, huh?) Also, it 'composts' much more quickly and easily, probably due to it's innate nitrogen content, and is SO MUCH easier to plant into!!! (It may also break down much faster and require retieing and placing the bales side to side rather than end to end to keep their integrity and conserve on water use. All of which is easy and fine with me)

I have put my bales in 2 'U' shapes, and put thick newspaper mulch in the middles and covered that area with wood pallets, to hold the paper down and also to support the melons/squash/etc. off the ground. I think this should work well.

It's GREAT to learn all of this so quickly (with the help of all of my strawbale journaling/forum pals), and I'm so excited about my garden, and about teaching others this wonderful concept.

Thanks, Kent!

Namaste- Suzan

 

Suzan: excellent summary of what you've learned so far. I, too, want to try some hay/grass bales. Keep us posted, sister!

 

More info on your posts and wire

Your straw bale gardening looks awesome! We just moved to a new place and are planting things willy nilly and hodge podge where we can this year but are working on some straw bales now! I would like to know what kind of posts you have used in the pics where the tomatoes are about ready to be tied up. they look very tall to me. did you set them in concrete? The wire is concrete reinforcement wire? How high up is the bottom of the wire! How many tomatoes did you plant in each bale? What kind of tomatoes were they?

Sorry for so many questions but i would love to duplicate this in my yard!

Thanks so much!
Kelley

 

Kelley,

I used 10 ft, 4 x 4, treated posts. Put'em 2 ft in the ground. No need for concrete. Just pack the dirt good. You may want to move the posts and it will be a job if you use concrete.

I put my posts about 13 ft apart so I could get 4 bales between them. That's about as long a span I wanted.

The concrete wire came in a 100 ft roll. It's 5 ft wide. You can get the wire in flat sheets, too, so you'll just need a way to get it home.

I put it about 28 inches off the ground. The tomatoes will grow up to it and you can begin tieing them off and weaving them in the wire.

Or you can make your trellis out of some other material.

Put at least 3 tomato plants per bale. 4 is a little crowded.

Plant whatever tomato variety you like. They all should do well.

Better Boys are great all-around tomato for canning and sandwiches.

German Johnsons are great sandwich tomatoes, but too low in acidity to can.

If you're only going to do a few bales, then I'd just use some BLOOD MEAL to get your bales going, but you need to get hopping.

About half way through the bale prep stage, go ahead and buy your tomato plants. They'll grow some and then plant them down to the first set of leaves. They'll sprout roots from the stem in addition to the root ball and make for a nice, healthy plant.