I had read an article on the Internet that intrigued me a few years back about using straw bales as a growing medium for raising vegetables.
“Straw bales are designed by Mother Nature to suck up and hold moisture,” it said. Also, when they start to decompose, they provide a nutrient rich medium for plant growth.
Last autumn we had used several straw bales as decoration for Halloween and Thanksgiving. So, instead of throwing them into the compost bin or dumpster, we decided to cover them with a tarp and store them until late winter for use in our attempt of straw bale gardening.
If you have a shady yard without an ideal vegetable growing area, but your driveway gets eight hours of sun or if you have trouble bending down, a straw bale garden is the way to go. A straw bale is portable and can be moved to any location that receives full sun for most of the day, plus you don’t have to bend down to pick your vegetables. It requires a very minimum amount of work; there is no tilling, cultivating or weed pulling. The prep work for our garden involved locating a sunny spot; we laid down newspaper on top of the existing grass as a weed barrier and had a tree company deliver a truck load of wood chips, for free. My wife thought the pile was a little daunting, but with some family perseverance, the wood chips were spread rather quickly to a depth of four inches holding the newspaper in place. This gave us a maintenance-free and attractive area to install the bales.
The bales were positioned side by side in rows with the cut side of the straw facing the sun. We had straw bales bound with nylon string which keep the bales together longer than bales tied with sisal. The straw bales need to be conditioned before any planting takes place. Conditioning is the process of adding fertilizer and water to the bale to start the composting, or breaking down of the inner part of the straw bale. This breaking down process of the straw is where the roots of the vegetable plants are going to grow. Any fertilizer that is high in nitrogen will start the composting process.
If you use a lawn fertilizer, make sure that it does not have any herbicides or pesticides mixed in with the formulation. I used organic fertilizers such as dried blood, sea kelp, urea and fertilizer formulated for tomato growing. The fertilizer was applied at approximately two cups per bale, sprinkled on top, then watered thoroughly until the water came out of the bottom of the bale. This helps distribute the fertilizer into the bale. Fertilizer was applied every other day and the bales were watered every day. After three weeks you can feel the inner heat of the composting effect when you insert your finger into the bale. A week before planting, I applied an organic 10-10-10 fertilizer and watered it in well.
To plant seedlings, make a little hole with a trowel in the straw bale, add some potting soil, and then plant the seedlings, making sure the roots are covered. For planting seeds, just spread a two inch thick layer of potting soil and sow your seeds directly into the potting soil. With the straw bales heating up, I got a two week jump start on planting, compared to regular gardening when you need to wait for the soil to warm up or dry out.
So far we have gotten three harvests of collard greens, two of spinach, two of Swiss chard, one of broccoli, continuous heads of lettuce as needed, and everything else is growing with abandonment for future harvest. The only maintenance that needs to be done is making sure that the bales are watered and the vegetables are picked. When the straw bales are done producing, they will be added to the compost bin and used next season as compost.
“How cucumbers along the surface creep, with crooked bodies, and with bellies deep.” —Virgil Georgics, translated by John Dryden (1697)
Craig Dupée is a garden-design consultant. He lives in Ewing with his wife and daughters. Send him your email questions at hort1014u@aol.com.
Straw bales can be used as portable, low maintenance containers to grow vegetables.,
