Straw bale planter?

[SweetCountryGirl]

Hi I was wondering if anyone had any special tips on how to make a hay bale garden?
An old acquaintance told me you can grow things with a hay bale? Is this true? Does it work well? What can I grow?

Thanks in advance

 

[lazy gardener]

If you do a google search, you will turn up enough information to plant a successful hay/straw bale garden. I can get you started:

How much gardening do you normally do? Are you new to gardening?

For a hay/straw bale garden to be successful, it should be planted where you have easy access to water, either a hose or a rain barrel which gets refilled often. They are thirsty, and require a lot of water. If water is not plentiful where you live, you might do better planting in the ground. Of course sunlight is of primary importance!

I like to put plastic under my hay bales, and fold it up around the bottom 6" of the bale to help keep the water in.

It takes at least 2 weeks (longer is better) to condition your bales for planting. They should be laid out so that the ties run parallel to the ground. (that way, they won't rot). You condition the bales by thoroughly soaking them, and adding high nitrogen fertilizer according to a "schedule" that you will find with your google search. One thing that your search might not tell you is that urine is a great source of nitrogen and other nutrients!!! The fertilization process will get the interior of the bale "hot composting". When the temp of the interior drops to a "seed viable level" you are then safe to plant. Many folks put compost or a good starter mix in the planting holes, and even cover the top of the bale with an inch or two of sterile starter mix and plant their seeds/plants in that.

It's a good idea to put some T posts at either end of your bale garden to help keep it from falling over as the center of the bales degrades. Those T posts will also be nice support for a plant trellis. Good crops: squash, cukes, herbs, potatoes, tomatoes (flowers can be tucked into the SIDES of the bale!)

I like to place my bales in a row so that the narrow end of the bales face out. This allows a wider planting bed.

Caution: be sure you source your materials from farms that DO NOT apply any herbicides to their crops/fields.

 

[JurassicBawk]

I did a straw bale garden the last 2 years, but will not be doing it this year. I have 2 acres that a former landscaper owned, and he let dwarf bamboo take over the whole area around the greenhouse. It seems impossible to kill so I was covering it with cardboard, weed block, old rugs, etc to be able to build up a raised bed garden, and the strawbale method seemed the easiest at the time so I didn't have to build beds and fill them with dirt.

I built a cattle panel arch for tomatoes and put 4 bales on each of the inside rows and one row of 4 bales on the outside row the first year, and last year just did the 8 inside the arch because I build a concrete block bed on the outside of the arch. My tomatoes and pole beans that I put in the bales did great both years, but last year I had difficulty finding bales and then realized when I got home with them that they were "baled wrong." Meaning that to have the strings off the ground and around the outside of the bale, the straw on top was then long ways instead of the end pieces sticking up. So the tomatoes did great until the bales drooped a few months later and literally pulled away from the plants, taking the roots with them. So if you do this, BE SURE that your straw bales are correct.

This year I've found a company that will deliver me a cubic yard of compost cheaper than I can buy bales or bagged dirt, so I've been mixing the leftover composted straw piles with the new compost in fabric grow bags to use on the arch.

This is when I originally set up the arch in early 2016. It's 3 12' cattle panels with 8 8' t-posts. I'm 5'10" and can walk under it with no problem, and it's about 6 foot wide so plenty of room for bales and a pathway to access everything.

This is probably late May 2017. These are the crappy bales that eventually collapsed, and you can see how grassy they were as well. I added solar torches (3 on each side) to be able to tell how much sun each end was getting. And my husband added a PVC irrigation system for me, which is very helpful when having to condition the bales initially.

Below is probably early July 2017. You can just barely make out the arch on the middle left, (the concrete block bed runs on the outside of it,) but you can see the tomato plants sticking out the top. I have Velcro support tape and just tape the plants to the wire as they grow, so some plants would go all the way across the arch and back to the other side. Then you just walk under the arch and pick what you want. I'm still expanding the garden this year and cutting/tilling some of the bamboo to make room to plant corn. The area behind the greenhouse is the beehive yard, so I may get a few bales and put over there with pollinator seeds in them since that won't require supports and the bees would appreciate it.

 

[3riverschick]

We bought book" straw bale gardening ".and put one in several years ago . it was a lot of fun and we grew a lot of vegetables. only problem was what to do with 20 bales of hay after the growing season was over . that's a lot of rotted straw to get rid of .what we did was we put the Bales up and staked soaker hose along the top of the bales and then watered them . that way it made things a lot easier . Make sure you buy the kind of hay that isn't going to sprout . I forget its name. Ours sprouted and it was kind of funny to see straw growing out of the bales. but we had a really good crop of vegetables.
Best,
Karen in Western Pennsylvania

 

[drewskimac]

Ah - Thankyou, Lazy! I actually kind of want to try this now lol... had no desire before reading your information.

 

[lazy gardener]

@JurrassicBawk awesome garden pics. Thanks for sharing.

 

[drewskimac]

I am always hearing mixed opinions. Some people love it, some people say it doesn’t work. I would say that obviously it does work if so meany people do it and stand by it. I think the main challenge is learning how to do it the right way, which I know nothing about. YouTube would be your friend here!

 

[drewskimac]

Well, you couldn't ask for a better reply than Lazy's, lol. So I have a question on that note - what is the benefit of straw bale gardening? Is is better for low-space situations, situations where you don't want to break the ground, or to cut down on weeds? I've always found it interesting but haven't really understood the purpose.

 

[Alaskan]

I am always hearing mixed opinions. Some people love it, some people say it doesn’t work. I would say that obviously it does work if so meany people do it and stand by it. I think the main challenge is learning how to do it the right way, which I know nothing about. YouTube would be your friend here!

one factor is the climate of where you live.... up here we have lots of places that have very cool summers. It is a bad idea if you don't get heat.

 

[lazy gardener]

It is a GOOD idea if you don't get much heat. B/C the prep process gives you a hot bed! Those plants really take off with the heat generated inside the bale.

Hay bale gardening is great for:

any place that has poor or non existent soil. You can even do a hay bale garden on a tarred driveway. People even do HB gardens on their decks by building a box to put the bale in. There would be a drainage hole in the bottom of the box, with a drain hose to detour water down and away from your deck.

Want to build a new garden spot, but don't want to till the ground? Start with a hay bale garden. By the next season, the bale will be almost completely composted, and the soil under it will be loosened up and well fertilized. The worms will have worked the area very well the previous season.

Want a raised bed? Do hay bale first, maybe even several successive seasons of hay bale gardens. Then put up your raised bed edging and convert to conventional gardening.

Physical challenges? Can't or shouldn't get down on the ground? Hay bales are almost 18" tall. Not strong enough to work the soil or use a tiller? Hay bales do not require any of that.

Want to "container garden" but can't spend the money on those huge pots, or all that potting soil? Hay bales are the perfect container. They are large, can be put together to cover a nice sized area, and they are cheap. If you find a good source of mulch hay (well on it's way to being conditioned for your gardening pleasure) it may even be free.

Who shouldn't "hay bale" garden? Any one who has a pre-conceived notion about what a garden should look like, and is not willing to shift their paradigm. Any one who does not have a source of hay or straw that has not been treated with herbicides. Any one who lives in an arid climate, and has water restrictions.