Wool and Spice

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments. — Janet Kilburn Phillips

Before planting

If the outcome to a problem doesn’t have life and death consequences I tend to adopt a “Why not try it, what’s the worst that can happen?” attitude to arrive at a solution.

When the problem involves gardening, all the better.

This spring as we were figuring out how to garden in a pile of mud and trying to fit too many plants into too little space, we read an article in Fine Gardening about straw bale gardening which sounded appealing. Create a square with 4 straw bales, fill the resulting center hole with compost and add more compost on top of the bales. Sprinkle on some fertilizer, then water every day for 10 days to start decomposition.

Once the bales start to soften up, plant anything you want right in the straw. The deep center hole is perfect for root crops.  At the end of the season, the decomposed straw goes on the garden as mulch or in the compost pile.

Sounds like fun doesn’t it? Instant garden this year, mulch for next year. Why not try it?

We modified the design a little by adding a partial second layer of  bales to allow vines to trail up and over. This should keep the plants exposed to fewer pests, at least in theory. The original design also called for installing a soaker hose but we passed on that.

Peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and melons — oh my!

A quick trip to the garden center for straw bales, a couple wheelbarrows of compost, water, fertilizer and a little patience before planting.

Sweet potatoes went in the center and are loving their home, they’ll need to be trimmed eventually. There’s a watermelon planted in the straw on one corner which took a while to make peace with its new home, but some  fertilizer and gentle coaxing (“Grow, dammit”) has persuaded it to green up and put out shoots. It’s catching up nicely.

On the opposite corner is a Green Zebra tomato which received its own pep-talk. The tower is developing a definite list as the bales crumble in on themselves, so there may need to be some intervention before the season’s over.

I threw in a leftover basil seedling and pepper plant on top, just for grins. A discarded branch planted for whimsy and some grass clippings for mulching and we’re gardening in straw, baby.

This seems like such a good idea that when we took over a third plot next to our existing two, we decided to make a bigger version of it. Our goal for the third garden was really to get it ready for next year when we’ll use it to plant permanent beds of strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb and blueberries. Yum!

We wanted a quick, low-labor way to combat the foot-high grass that had grown up in the plot. We weren’t interested in tilling or removing grass clods like we’d spent hours doing on the first two beds and we were running out of compost to amend the soil.

Bed 3 ready for planting

Straw bales seemed to be the way to go. Three trips to the garden center netted us 12 bales of straw and a van overflowing with leftover bits of straw. (man, I wish I owned a pickup).

Before positioning the straw we put down layers of wet newsprint to help discourage the grass. I don’t know if it was strictly necessary since the straw should do an effective job of killing the grass, but I had a roll of newsprint that has been gathering cobwebs for years. Problem solved.

Since we were covering the whole 5 x 20 foot space with straw we created a large 6-bale rectangle on one end with sunflowers planted in the (partially-filled) center and squash and cucumbers on the bales themselves.

The opposite end of the plot got a 4-bale square with more sweet potatoes in the center and nasturtium seeds planted in the bales. In between the two bale gardens we fluffed up a straw bale and planted potatoes. They are the only plants that aren’t thriving. Three weeks later, we’re still waiting for sprouts, but haven’t given up.

If our plan works, our third plot should be grass-free and enriched next spring, ready for crops. We’ll have raised the level of the bed without a lot of work, had fun trying a new way of gardening and perhaps learned a thing or two along the way. The bales may need frequent fertilizing during the growing season but that’s easy.

Experimenting is fun, no? Yes!

Tags: straw bales