Straw Bale Gardening

Another way we're changing the way we live is going from this:

to this:

I swear our neighbors think we're growing something illegal.

The choice to convert was pretty much out of necessity; we moved from a few acres in the county to a small-ish backyard in town. While we still have two raised garden beds for lettuce and herbs:

This will be our first year in exploring the world of straw bale gardening. I can't take credit for the work or the idea, but my husband and Dad can. Dad heard about it from a PA in his doctor's office, shared it with my husband and the hardcore researcher that he is went balls to the wall with it and here we are. 

Growing, harvesting and preserving our own food is extremely important to us. Not only do we can (or freeze) a majority of what we grow, we are also a family of hunters and the meat in the freezer is mostly what we've taken from the land or bought from a local farmer. We've learned so much over the years about when to plant what for this area, where to buy seeds (our non-GMO seeds we bought from HERE). Gardening is a trial and error labor of love (and sometimes frustration). We've had many gardening fails and some extreme successes and we're hoping that this straw bale thing is going to work. Anything that I don't have to weed or 'till, sounds heavenly to me. Hopefully even once we're out of town for good we can use this permanently. If it works. Do we sound skeptical... or hopeful?

So if you google "straw bale gardening", you'll get alot of information, but most of the information (according to my husband) always pointed back to one book....

So we bought the book.

The basic principle is you condition the bales with fertilizer etc so that they are ready and prepped for soil and plants. This is a process and I'm not going to lie, a little time consuming. A did a "test bale" and planted some peas along one side and VIOLA! They came up! Since it's still early in planting season in our neck of the woods, we've been covering with plastic to make little greenhouses and to protect from frost. One warm day and a little laziness on our part, our greenhouse turned into a sweat shop and we fried those little boogers. So, back to square one with that test bale, BUT we now know it works!!

We have traditionally waited until May 15th to start to plant, because by then the threat of frost was just about nil, but we have always felt behind and we felt the heat of late July and August just stunted some of our plants and they didn't produce like we thought they should. So we started earlier this year and it's much easier to cover with plastic just in case we do have frost.

Tucked in for the night.

We (er, I mean the hubs) completed conditioning and prepping the bales...

And we all planted last night, A did most of it, but Little Man and I (and Rory) helped in between dinner making, throwing rocks and fetching balls out of the woods. There still a little more to be done, but the bulk of it is in.

Rory, of course, fell asleep in the Ergo, she snuggles her head down like this, slept all through dinner and some planting. 

So, for this year we have (and will have): peas, iceberg lettuce, leaf lettuce, basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano, cilantro, onions, chives, tomatoes (beefsteak, yellow, cherry), green beans, kidney beans, black beans, cabbage, peppers (green, red, banana), sugar snap peas, kale, squash, zucchini, potatoes and goodness, I know I'm forgetting something. 

I'll keep you updated on our progress as spring turns into summer and summer turns into "oh so many squash I could die". If you've felt like you've never had the room or couldn't build some garden boxes, this could be a great solution. A few things to remember though...

1. Straw and hay are not the same thing. Straw is the hollow stalks of things like wheat, great for spreading over grass seed, or planting things in. Hay is greener, sweeter, heavier, full of nutrition for dems farm aminals. 

2. It could be a little expensive to go full-on organic. Although we have shifted way out of using different chemicals and bug repellents on our garden, we just couldn't afford to go completely organic on the straw bales this year. The start up with stakes, plastic, soaker hoses, bales, and then the fertilizer etc was a little pricey (keep in mind). Next year our only cost will be the bales and fertilizers so hopefully we'll be able to make the switch.  Remember this is an investment!

3. Like I said before, it's a process, as all successful gardening is. So just throwing a straw bale out in the yard and calling it a day, may not cut it.

If you have questions, ASK! And I'll ask my husband.