Well, That's It 'Til Next Year

I hope this little diary (built in retrospect) will inspire you to consider straw bales as a viable alternative gardening method. It certainly impressed me!

Things to Consider

Mother Natures Only Goof-up in My Garden
Purchase straw bales, not hay.

Bales left outside for one year can be planted into without having to condition them using fertilizer. (or so I have read)

Bales that have been watered in place all year are VERY HEAVY and hard to relocate.

Have a plan for the bales that have thoroughly decomposed at the end of the year. Mine were spread about as compost in the surrounding forest.

Only plant what you can eat, store or give away.

Don't over-plant. Give your bedding plants room to grow. (I may reconsider squash next year!!)

All Good Things Must End

The time to put the garden away had finally come. The netting was removed, the structure taken down and the last of the plants pulled from the bales. Three of six bales were still in pretty good shape, and three just fell apart in a rich humus. I think I will try and grow potatoes in those three good bales this season if they have wintered well.

I wanted to show a couple of pictures of the root structures of a couple of the plants. In the past, in my container gardens, the roots hardly ever changed much from the day they were planted.

The above picture is one of the tomato plants root structure.

This is the root clump inter-twined with the straw from the basil plant. My foot is just to demonstrate the scale.

Some of the Yield

Lebanese Cucumbers. After eating them in sandwiches and salads, this was what was left at the end of the year when we cleaned out the garden.

The last of the tomatoes. Only a couple of the green ones were too dryed up to ever ripen, but we ate tomatoes all season long.

Winter Squash - Soup anyone. I actually gave several away and then ended up making the last of them into Maple Syrup and Roasted Squash Soup. Yummy. The shoe is just for scale.

The Sad Little Red Pepper. OK, I wouldn't recommend growing them under everything else, as this was the entire yield.

A Late Season

All of the waiting in the beginning paid off on the back-end, as things just kept growing and growing. This is a picture taken in October. It's not very focused, but what I'm trying to show is that there is a tomato blossom in the middle of the picture. In late October.

This is one of the bean plants late in October. I wouldn't have wanted to eat these beans as they were very tough and hanging from the neighboring tree in places. The plant had grown so large that it grasped the nearby branches of the oak tree and we literally had beans hanging in the tree.

More Goodness

Unripe Squash

Cucumber

Squash Blossom with a honey bee busy inside

Cherry Tomatoes

Runner Beans

Healthy Plants

Curly Parsley

Peppery Nasturtiums

Flat or Italian Parsley

Luscious Blemish Free Tomatoes

More Basil than Imaginable

This is the first time that I can remember having so much planted so closely together and not having any disease or bug infestations. No ear-wigs, no slugs, no aphids. The summer of 2010 was a wet one, so I didn't do much additional watering, but I also didn't have any mildew problems. The plants that grew were all strong specimens, even the bean plants that started out so sad looking.

The bales occasionally sprouted mushrooms which didn't have any effect on the edible plants, and quite often hay-seed within the bale would sprout. This could easily be trimmed off with scissors, but I let the dog nibble it as it was so fresh and sweet.

I believe that by planting a small variety of a few vegetables, there was nothing that became a magnet for great hoards of infestatious visitors. The garden was planted in full sun, and mother nature looked after most of the watering. Occasionally, if the bales felt dry, I would water them, but usually they were only dry on the outside. If I poked my fingers in, it was warm and moist within the bale.

Patience Pays Off

These shots were taken the last week of July. Things have really come along. We went from thinking we would have one lowly bean to having beans for dinner for several nights. Those pole beans have to be eaten when they are immature, as they become tough when a little older.

The tomato plants were so prolific, we were eating fried green tomatoes, green tomato pie and giving away green tomatoes to any takers.

The basil went crazy and several batches of pesto were stored in the freezer. We had fresh herbs with most meals.

Be prepared

In anticipation of great runs of climbing beans, I built a couple of structures of cedar strips tied together at the top and splayed them over the bales where the beans were planted.
I also inverted one tomato cage over another and secured them with electrical tape, to get some height, and inserted them into the bales over the tomato plants. I was able to fasten the tops to the structure for some strength, as when the bales really start to decompose, they don't have a lot of holding power.
In hind-sight, having the bottoms of the netting open allowed the squash to ramble out, which was a good thing, cause they are heavy producers. I probably had about 20 feet of length on one of the squash plants - dotted with squash all along.

Slow Going

Nothing bolted. In fact, it was under-whelming. Hubby was starting to tease me about the amount of work and the lack of production. One bean grew, and the cucumbers looked the same as the day they were planted, except for a couple of blossoms on them.

This is the one bean. Look carefully!! The plant looked really weak and the other bean plant was just as unimpressive.

This is taken in early July, and the garden was planted in May. Not a lot of growth. The pepper plants are planted at the base of a couple of bales and the cucumbers are those little things at the far end of the furthest row.

Protect It

There are several ways to set the bales. I read some folks tie a rope around them to try and give them a bit more stability. Some people stake all around them. Some people put them in boxes, but I wanted as little labour as possible, so mine were just butted up against each other, two rows of three to fit inside my structure.

As we have deer who visit the yard, I had to ensure the garden didn't get gobbled up by foraging wildlife. I used the frame of a sun-shade or canopy and wrapped it with deer netting. I tied colored plastic flagging tape to it, and wrapped the excess at the bottom in tree branches. That wasn't such a good idea, as the first morning I had caught a chipmunk. After freeing it, I simply cut the netting and left it open at the bottom.

The flagging tape was so that birds wouldn't fly into the netting. I did have to help a couple of birds navigate out the top once they were inside, but no fatalities to report.

The garden always had garter-snakes and frogs in it, or around it, which I took as a good sign of a healthy environment.

Plant it!

The method I used was to purchase bedding plants and transplant them. That way, I did not need to add any soil for seed germination, as that part was already done. I found a wonderful healthy looking selection at both Canadian Tire and Loblaws. Further, I was able to find individual plants and not have to buy trays of six or four.

The garden was planted with winter squash, lebanese cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, everyday run-of-the-mill tomatoes, "Blue Lake" climbing or runner beans, sweet peppers, nasturtiums, basil, oregano, and curly and flat parsley.

Using a sharp trowel, part the bale and insert the plants, with or without the soil attached as it didn't seem to matter.

Let it Cool

After the fertilizing has been done, allow the bales a week or so to cool down before planting, but continue to water well. The idea is to speed the bales decomposition so that in effect, you are planting into well rotted compost.
Nowhere did I find any literature or instruction about cooling down, but I wasn't ready to plant yet as I hadn't bought my bedding plants. This may be why I had such a slow start, but I am simply relaying what I did.
(Now that I look back, I think I was supposed to plant immediately after the last day of fertilizing! Oh Well!!)

Condition the Bales

A couple of weeks before planting, start to condition the bales. For the first 5 days, pour water to the bales. Really soak them.
For the next 5 days and using one/half cup per bale of Urea (46-0-0), or Amonium Nitrate (34,0,0) sprinkle it on and water it in well. I purchased my fertilizer at the farm supply shop. When I say water in well, really drench the bales. Do this every day.
Then for the last 4 or 5 days, use 1/4 cup per bale of the fertilizer, again watering well. The info I found on-line suggested a 10-10-10 granular feed for the last day, and again water it in well. I only added 10-10-10 once, and the granules were still sitting on top of the bales at the end of the year. A new meaning to "slow release".
Once fully conditioned, you are ready to plant.

This is the photographic diary of my straw bale garden

This garden was planted in 2010, on rocky terrain in my back-yard, near Perth, Ontario. I'm hopeful that this blog will help demonstrate the method used and the success I experienced.

Step One.

Place bales, string side out, cut side up to allow them to wick water more readily.

I used only 6 bales as we have deer who visit the yard regularly and need to be able to protect it from being eaten by the wildlife.
I secured soaker hose to the bales using coat hanger that I cut up and fashioned into giant staples.